Hayden Panettiere's American Dad! Role Explained

This article mentions sexual assault and suicide

"American Dad!" has welcomed many celebrity guest stars over the years, including the late Hayden Panettiere, who voiced a memorable character in a 2010 episode titled "Stan's Food Restaurant." The main plot centers on Stan (Seth MacFarlane) — an ultra-conservative, chaotic C.I.A. agent — following his dream of opening a family restaurant. The episode's B-plot is where Panettiere's character comes in.

Panettiere plays a new student named Ashley, who spends time with Stan's high school son, Steve (Scott Grimes). When she first meets Steve, she claims that she got expelled from her previous school for promiscuous behaviour before she even tells him her name. Steve accepts an invitation to come over to Ashley's place when her mom goes out of town. The only thing is, he needs to bring a buddy to entertain her friend, Julia. It turns out that Julia is a doll that Ashely believes to be real.

Things get even weirder from there: Steve brings his friend Snot (Curtis Armstrong) along, and Ashley wrongly convinces herself that Snot assaulted Julia. She eventually decides that the supposed encounter was consensual, and then claims that Snot got Julia pregnant. After they arrange a trip to an abortion clinic, Steve finds it difficult to progress his relationship with Ashley, so he stages Julia's suicide to bring Ashely back to reality.

Ashley wasn't the first promiscuous high schooler that Panettiere played. Before she shot to stardom as the practically indestructible Claire Bennet in NBC's superhero drama series "Heroes," she guest starred as a young sex worker in a 2005 episode of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit," one of two different "SVU" characters that Panettiere played prior to becoming famous.

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If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

Hayden Panettiere's character in "American Dad!" wasn't her only voice role in an animated TV series: She played Yumi in Disney's 1970s police drama homage "Fillmore!" and she voiced three characters – Cheetara, Ramona, and Seuss Sister — in a 2007 episode of the stop-motion sketch comedy show "Robot Chicken." She also worked on several animated movies, with her most famous voice role being her first: Princess Dot in 1998's "A Bug's Life," a critical and commercial success. "It was really, really exciting, and it was really neat," Panettiere said about working on the Pixar movie during a red carpet appearance (via WISN), adding, "I have never done something this big."

Panettiere went on to voice Suri in "Dinosaur," Fairy Princess Willow in "Scooby-Doo and the Goblin King," Kate in "Alpha and Omega," and Red Puckett in "Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil." Video game enthusiasts will also remember Panettiere as Samantha in "Until Dawn" and as one of the voices of Kairi in the "Kingdom Hearts" universe. Hollywood reacted with shock when news of Panettiere's death broke, and among those to pay tribute was Alyson Stoner, who also voiced Kairi. "From one Kairi to another, I just wanted to acknowledge the tremendous loss, not only for the 'Kingdom Hearts' family but of course all of the close loved ones and the millions of lives Hayden reached," a teary Stoner said in a video shared on Instagram.