Claire Bennet/ Hayden Panettiere

Hayden Panettiere stars in NBC's Emmy Award-nominated ensemble drama series "Heroes" as Claire Bennet, an indestructible high school cheerleader, who must veil her abilities from her peers as well as keep other secrets from her mysterious father "H.R.G." (Jack Coleman). "Heroes" follows the lives of ordinary people who discover they possess extraordinary abilities.

Most recently, Panettiere starred in the independent film "The Architect," opposite Anthony LaPaglia and Isabella Rosselini, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, and "Mr. Gibb" for Kevin Spacey's company, Triggerstreet. She co-stars in the upcoming romantic dramedy "Shanghai Kiss," and this past Fall, she starred as the lead in "Bring It On: All or Nothing," the sequel to Universal's box-office hit.

Training rigorously and executing her own stunts, she dazzled audiences in her role as a competitive ice skater in "Ice Princess" and recorded "I Fly" for the film's soundtrack. Her spitfire characters in both "Joe Somebody" as Tim Allen's daughter and "Remember the Titans" with Denzel Washington helped to establish her talent. Her other film credits include "Raising Helen," directed by Garry Marshall; "Message in a Bottle," with Kevin Costner; "Object of My Affection," with Jennifer Aniston; and "The Affair of the Necklace," with Hilary Swank.

Panettiere starred in the television movie "Lies My Mother Told Me," opposite Joely Richardson, and in the acclaimed "Tiger Cruise," based on the true events of September 11. Her HBO film "Normal," opposite Jessica Lange and Tom Wilkinson and directed by Jane Anderson -- premiered at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival.

Panettiere's voice is as recognizable as her face. She embodied the challenging leading role as a jockey in "Racing Stripes," opposite the voices of Dustin Hoffman and Whoopi Goldberg. She also starred in Disney's animated features "A Bug's Life" as Princess Dot and in "Dinosaurs" as Suri. Her work for "A Bug's Life Read-A-Long" garnered her a Grammy nomination for Best Spoken Word Album, as well as a nomination for the Hollywood Reporter's Young Star Award for Best Young Voiceover Talent.

Adding to her accomplishments, Panettiere has been named the new face of Neutrogena. She recently received Movieline's Hollywood Life Magazine's Young Hollywood Exciting New Face/ Female Award for 2005. She also has been spending time in the recording studio working on her own debut CD through Hollywood Records.

Panettiere is an ambassador, along with fellow ambassadors Nelson Mandela and Queen Noor, for the World Conservation Union's (ICUN) Wildlife Foundation, an organization that helps raise funds to support and save endangered species. As of late, she has joined forces with Pierce Brosnan to save the whales through the Whaleman Foundation.

Panettiere lives in New York with her parents and younger brother. Her birthday is August 21.

The adopted daughter of Noah and Sandra Bennet, Claire lived the ordinary life of a suburban cheerleader in Odessa, Texas, until her self-healing ability manifested at the age of 16. Shortly thereafter, Claire discovered the identity of her birth parents: soon-to-be U.S. senator Nathan Petrelli, and fire manipulator Meredith Gordon, both evolved humans. During high school, Claire was forced to assume an alternate identity and go underground with her family to avoid those who would use her for brutal biological experimentation. In addition to the problems every teenager faces, Claire had to deal with kidnappings and psycho killers, and a secret agent father who rarely told the truth about his activities. Now that she's a college freshman, Claire has finally taken back her original identity and started over, determined to live a normal life.

Read more about this character at Heroes Wiki.