Hayden Leslie Panettiere (born August 21, 1989) is an American actress, singer, and Grammy Award nominee. She is best known for her roles as Britney Allen in part three of the Bring it on series, and on the NBC series Heroes as Claire Bennet. She also starred as the voice actor for the role of Kairi on the popular Square Enix Kingdom Hearts series.

She was born in Palisades, New York. daughter of Lesley R. Vogel, a former soap opera actress, and Alan L. "Skip" Panettiere, a fire department lieutenant. She has one younger brother, fellow actor Jansen Panettiere.

Panettiere attended South Orangetown Middle School in New York but following 7th grade, finished her high-school education via home schooling and has postponed higher education due to her dedication to an acting career, though she has expressed an interest in "continuing to learn".

Hayden began professional modeling at the age of 5 months old. She then began appearing in commercials at 11 months, first appearing in an advertisement for Playskool. She later landed a role as Sarah Roberts on the ABC soap opera One Life to Live (1994- 1997) and later as the child Lizzie Spaulding on the CBS soap opera Guiding Light when she was seven years old (1996 - 2000). In Guiding Light, for Hayden's character Lizzie's battle with leukemia, the show received a Special Recognition Award from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society for bringing national awareness of the disease to the attention of daytime viewers. Panettiere currently stars as Claire Bennet in the NBC series Heroes as a high school cheerleader with regenerative healing powers. Due to her role on Heroes, she has become a regular on the science fiction convention circuit, having been invited to attend many popular conventions around the world in 2007, including New York Comic-Con and Fan Expo Canada. In regards to the roles she has played, Panettiere admits that options are sometimes limited because "people look at [her] as either the 'popular cheerleader' type or just 'the blonde'."

She has appeared in over a dozen full-length feature films, as well as several made-for-TV movies. She provided the voice for Dot in the Pixar CGI animated movie A Bug's Life for Disney. In addition, she had a leading role as the voice of Kairi in the highly successful Kingdom Hearts series of video games for the Playstation 2. She had a starring role in FOX's Ally McBeal as Ally McBeal's daughter, and a recurring guest role in Malcolm in the Middle. She guest starred in Law & Order: SVU. She played Sheryl Yoast in the film Remember the Titans. She played a teenage girl named Audrey in Raising Helen. She starred in Bring It On: All or Nothing as a cheerleader. She held a supporting role as Adelaide Bourbon in the recently released independent film Shanghai Kiss.

She will later appear in the drama film Fireflies in the Garden as a younger version of Emily Watson's character Jane Lawrence. Coincidentally, George Newbern, who voiced Sephiroth in Kingdom Hearts II (alongside Panettiere) and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, will also appear in the film. In June 2007, she signed with the William Morris Agency to represent her in her endeavors. She was previously represented by United Talent Agency.

Forbes estimated that she earned $2 million in 2007.

Neutrogena made Panettiere the cover girl for their new worldwide ad campaign; following in the footsteps of actresses Kristin Kreuk, Josie Bissett, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Mandy Moore, Mischa Barton, Gabrielle Union and Jennifer Freeman. Panettiere recently did a Got Milk? ad, like recent other ads featuring the cast of Heroes.

On October 31, 2007 Panettiere was involved in a confrontation with Japanese fishermen as she tried to disrupt their annual dolphin hunt in Taiji, Wakayama. She paddled out on a surfboard, with five other surfers from Australia and the United States (including former Home and Away star Isabel Lucas) in an attempt to reach a pod of dolphins to release them. The confrontation lasted more than ten minutes before the surfers were forced to return to the beach. The surfers drove straight to Osaka airport and left the country to avoid being arrested for trespassing by the Japanese police. Many Japanese consider this kind of act as an attack on their culture. Taiji's fishery cooperative union argues that these protesters "continue willfully to distort the facts about this fishery" and protester's agendas are " based neither on international law nor on science but rather on emotion for economic self-interest." Hayden claims that an arrest warrant on her has been issued in Japan for her interference in the dolphin hunt. In November 2007, Hayden was awarded the "Compassion in Action Award" from the animal rights group PETA for her efforts to stop the dolphin hunt in Japan.