Pastor recalls April 2024 meeting with Hayden Panettiere, describes "sad presence" before actress's death at 36

GREENVILLE, Aug. 16. Actress Hayden Panettiere, 36, was found unresponsive at an apartment complex in Greenville, South Carolina, the Greenville County Coroner's Office reported. Preliminary autopsy results showed no signs of trauma, and the death remains under investigation.

Dylan Novak, founder of Celebrity Evangelist Ministries and youth pastor at Henard's Chapel Missionary Baptist Church in Rogersville, Tennessee, said news of her death recalled a meeting he and his wife had with Panettiere in April 2024, at Steel City Con in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. They connected with the actress over parenthood and raising daughters, and shared their faith with her during the encounter.

Novak told Fox News Digital that he and his wife walked away sensing what he described as a "sad presence" about Panettiere. "One thing my wife and I immediately started talking about after we met her was what a sad presence there was about her," he said. He added that people he said he knows in the entertainment industry who had worked with Panettiere shared similar observations. "There was such a kindness about her, but there was also such a heartbreaking sadness that also surrounded her," he said.

Panettiere grew up on screen in "Remember the Titans" and "Ice Princess" before her roles in the television dramas "Heroes" and "Nashville."

Novak's ministry has reached more than 2,000 celebrities with gospel outreach, including President Donald Trump, Tom Cruise, Keanu Reeves, Ozzy Osbourne, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Sydney Sweeney. For each encounter, he brings a gift bag with an embossed Bible, Christian resources, and a handwritten note drawing on the celebrity's own public comments about faith.

In 2023, Novak presented Osbourne with a modern-translation Bible tailored to Osbourne's stated difficulty understanding scripture. Osbourne's son Jack later told Novak his father kept the book on his nightstand and spent hours reading it. After Osbourne's death in July 2025, the ministry received hundreds of emails from fans requesting the same materials, with some writing to say they wanted to be saved.

"It just filled me with the fuel, the fire of the gospel of, we need to keep doing this," Novak told Fox News Digital following Panettiere's death. He said he wished he had had a chance to follow up with her after their April 2024 meeting, but found comfort in having shared his faith with her.