Read This: Heroes creator Tim Kring remembers Hayden Panettiere

In a new column for Variety, Kring recalls working with Panettiere on the hit NBC series, which became the actor’s breakout role. Panettiere played the Cheerleader Claire Bennet, and Kring recalls that “Hayden had no sense of jaded child actor quality to her.” Kring continues, “She was playing her actual age, which made for kind of a meta quality to the role because she had to understand her own teenage emotions in order to access them.” 

But it wasn’t just the similarities between Panettiere and Bennet that made the show work; Kring recalls Panettiere has an actor of immense skill and a personality that attracted him as a writer. He writes:

She had this bull-in-a-china-shop quality — a determination that really influenced how we wrote her character. The best characters always meet you halfway between the actor and what’s on the page. And in “Heroes,” where Claire Bennet ended and Hayden started became a blurred line. She never had to change how she would say something to be Claire Bennet. It was the Hayden voice cadence that we got used to writing for.

In closing, he remembers calling her up—via her agent—years later to ask her something, which he says he was “teasingly admonished.” He writes: “‘You don’t have to call my agent. Don’t be Hollywood about it. Just pick up the phone and call me,’ she insisted.” Kring calls her “a joy and an inspiration to work with.” You can read the whole column here.