Hayden Panettiere had everything ready to fly to Germany.
She wanted to hug Kaya, her 11-year-old daughter, right during the week of her 37th birthday. But she died suddenly in South Carolina, just a few days before the date she never got to celebrate.
Her father, Alan Panettiere, confirmed the news with a broken heart, and those who knew her remembered how much she loved that little girl.
On August 21, the day she would have blown out the candles, thousands of fans filled social media with the hashtag “happy heavenly birthday”, remembering Claire Bennet from Heroes, Juliette Barnes from Nashville, and Kirby from Scream.
Her last post, from July 27, showed a black-and-white photo with her friend Randall Slavin, taken 15 years earlier, smiling without knowing it would be her farewell on Instagram.