Melissa Gilbert urges child actor protections after Hayden Panettiere death

Melissa Gilbert has fiercely advocated for child stars to be protected in the wake of Hayden Panettiere's tragic death.

The Little House on the Prairie alum penned an emotional Substack essay sharing her views titled Enough Is Enough.

"Within one year, Michelle Trachtenberg, Daveigh Chase and Hayden Panettiere have died. Three former female child actors of the same generation are gone. Tragically, heartbreakingly, agonisingly too soon," she wrote.

"They are gone and the question I have been turning over and over in my head is, 'Why?' Why are these three sweet, wildly talented, vibrant, vital young women gone?"

Trachtenberg died at age 39 in February 2025 from complications of diabetes mellitus, while Chase died in June at the age of 36 from acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).

Panettiere was found dead on 16 August at a Greenville, South Carolina, Airbnb she was staying at with her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Brian Hickerson. She too was 36.

Gilbert shared that she takes the deaths personally because she was once in the same place.

"We are all members of the same tribe; Female Former Child Performers, and when one of us dies, it runs through all of us like an electrical current," she penned. "When three of us die so close together, something is very, very wrong.

"How do we fix or end this before someone else dies?"

Gilbert's passionate essay came after her husband, Timothy Busfield, was charged in a child sex abuse case back in June.

On 13 January the West Wing actor was arrested on charges of criminal sexual contact of a minor and child from incidents with two twin boy child stars dating back to 2022.