Hayden Panettiere Shared Guilt Over Brother's Death Before Her Own

Hayden Panettiere Found Unresponsive, Death Under InvestigationHayden Panettiere wished she could have been her brother’s hero. Two months before the Heroes star died on Aug. 16 at 36, she shared a vulnerable glimpse into her grief following her brother Jansen Panettiere's unexpected death. “It just evolves,” she said during an exclusive interview with E! News in May, “and especially with a sibling and being the older sibling, you're just riddled with guilt that you didn't do your job, and especially what took him was something that I, of all people, should have understood.” That’s why, when she sat down to write her 2026 memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning, she said, “the hardest part was talking about my brother.” Jansen died in February 2023 at the age of 28 due to cardiomegaly (enlarged heart), coupled with aortic valve complications, the Panettiere family told E! News in a statement at the time. And while the Bring It On alum knew her brother’s passing was out of her control, she continued to feel the weight of his loss up until her death. “I miss him all the time,” she continued to E! News. “I didn't think I would have to do life without him, but I'm grateful that I had the time I had with him.” Though Hayden—who shared 11-year-old daughter Kaya with ex-fiancé Wladimir Klitschko—noted in her memoir that she always saw signs of her brother, she was trying to ground herself in reality. Photo by Amanda Edwards/Getty Images“I try not to get too wrapped up in that, because your brain starts playing tricks on you,” she explained, “and then everything becomes a sign, and you're like, ‘Now I'm just making things up to make myself feel better.’” Even so, she had her own ways of keeping her brother’s legacy alive. “He was an incredible artist, and my favorite thing that I have are his paintings, and I feel like he's so alive in those paintings,” she explained, “like that part of him is immortalized because of the part of himself that he put into his art.” On Aug. 16, Hayden was found dead in Greenville, South Carolina, where police and Emergency Medical Services responded to reports of an “unresponsive female.”Photo by Kevin Mazur/WireImage“The case is under investigation by the Greenville Police Department in conjunction with the Greenville County Coroner’s Office,” a spokesperson for the Greenville Police Department told E! News in an Aug. 17 statement. “The preliminary investigation has not indicated any signs of foul play or suspicious circumstances." Following her death, Hayden’s father Skip Panettiere spoke out about their family’s “profound sadness.” “She was an incredible light," he told People in a statement, "and a force of nature who brought immeasurable love and joy to all who knew her—and to the millions who watched her onscreen.” Keep reading for a look back at Hayden’s life in photos…Photo by Ann Limongello/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images1994Photo by Margaret Norton/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images1996Photo by Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images1998Photo by Jean-Paul Aussenard/WireImage2001Photo by Evan Agostini/Getty Images2003Photo by Evan Agostini/Getty Images2004Photo by M. Caulfield/WireImage for ABC Cable Networks Group2004Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images2005Photo by Jean-Paul Aussenard/WireImage2006Photo by Sylvain Gaboury/FilmMagic2006Photo by Valerie Macon/Getty Images2008Photo by Taylor Hill/FilmMagic)2010Jason Merritt/Getty Images2012Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images2013Photo by Kevork Djansezian/NBC/NBCUniversal via Getty Images2014Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for Time Warner Cable2014Lars Baron/Bongarts/Getty Images2015Rick Diamond/Getty Images2016Roy Rochlin/FilmMagic2017Hayden Panettiere/Twitter 2018Amanda Edwards/Getty Images2019 Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images2022Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images2023Nathan Congleton/NBC via Getty Images2024Jeff Neira/Disney via Getty Images2026For the latest breaking news updates, click here to download the E! News App