Director's Emotional Comparison of Hayden Panettiere to Brittany Murphy Sparks Reactions

Director Griff Furst, who worked with Hayden Panettiere before her death, sees parallels between the actress and late Uptown Girls star Brittany Murphy.

“[Hayden] made me think of the similarities to Brittany Murphy, just in the sense that I made a movie with her about a year before she passed, and she too was a brilliant, incredibly gifted woman who got sucked into a dark place,” Furst, 44, said in an Instagram video on Monday, August 24.

Murphy, who was best known for her breakout role as Tai Frasier in the 1995 teen comedy Clueless, died in her Los Angeles home at age 32 in December 2009 from untreated pneumonia combined with severe iron-deficiency anemia and multiple prescription and over-the-counter drug intoxication. Her death was ruled accidental. Five months later, in May 2010, Murphy’s husband, Simon Monjack, also died from acute pneumonia and severe anemia. (Furst was Murphy's costar in the Lifetime movie Tribute, which aired in April 2009.)