Director Griff Furst claims he was asked to participate in an "intervention" to help Hayden Panettiere.

The moviemaker worked with the Heroes star - passed away on Sunday (16.08.26) at the age of 36 - on 2025's direct-to-video action-horror film A Breed Apart and he has revealed he kept in touch with Hayden's team after she finished filming and he was asked to join a group trying to help the troubled actress but the planned intervention "never happened".

In a video posted on social media, he explained: "When we wrapped, however, I stayed in touch with her team. What eventually got determined was that she might need an intervention and I got asked to participate.

"I said yes, and that intervention did not happen, at least not that I'm aware of, and I wasn't leading the charge on that and it wouldn't have been appropriate for me.

"A producer or director, no matter how certain you are that an actor or crew member is in a bad situation, you don't have the proof or the benefit of the time to verify it.

"You can adjust the schedule, you can collect internal reporting and you can assign a handler to make sure that that individual is being taken care of as best as they can."

Furst also claimed Hayden may have struggled with substance abuse in later years because she spent her childhood as a working actress.

He said: "When I think about this, it's not just a Hayden story. I grew up on movie sets, and I know a whole lot of child actors very well, and I understand what it does to somebody to grow up in front of a camera before they're old enough to consent.

"Hayden started acting when she was 11 months old, so I was rooting for Hayden to beat the addiction that she spoke about openly and publicly in her memoir."

It comes after Furst previously admitted there was a "dark energy" in her room when she brought her on/off boyfriend Brian Hickerson - who was said to have been with her when she died - to set.

In an Instagram video, he said: "I knew that she was insanely talented, so when she signed on to do this picture we were shooting, I was psyched. I really wanted to work with her ...

"I get word from the movie's security team who picked her up from the airport that something was off. And I didn't think much about it, and so I left set and I walked over to greet her and her boyfriend Brian.

"He opened the door, and Hayden was incredibly sweet and gracious and excited to work, but she was not okay."

While the director didn't explain what was "off" and "not okay" with the Scream 4 star, he insisted it as "pretty clear" that all was not well.

He added: "I'm not gonna get into the details of why that was, but having worked on over 100 movies and seeing just about everything, it was pretty clear that she wasn't okay/ And the energy in her room was pretty dark."