Hayden Panettiere Reflects on Grief Following Brother Jansen’s Death

Hayden Panettiere shared her deep sense of grief and guilt over her brother Jansen Panettiere’s unexpected death in a May interview with E! News. Just two months before her own passing on August 16 at the age of 36, she provided a poignant look into her emotional struggles.

In the interview, the Heroes star expressed her feelings as the older sibling, stating, “It just evolves… 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.”

Jansen Panettiere passed away in February 2023 at the age of 28 from cardiomegaly, which is an enlarged heart, combined with complications from aortic valve issues, as confirmed by the Panettiere family in a statement to E! News.

As she prepared her 2026 memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, she elaborated on the difficulty of discussing her brother in the book, noting, “the hardest part was talking about my brother.” Despite knowing that his death was beyond her control, Hayden continued to feel the profound weight of his loss after that tragic event.

Special Credits: Image Courtesy of Eonline