Hayden Panettiere Opens Up in Emotional First Interview About Her Brother’s Sudden Death: ‘I’ll Always Be Heartbroken’ (Exclusive)

The actress was finally sober, single and getting back to work when her beloved younger brother died suddenly. How she’s doing her best to heal from the trauma.

2023 was supposed to be a very good year for actress Hayden Panettiere.

The Amber Alert star, who for years had struggled with drugs and alcohol addiction, was clean and sober after spending time at an in-patient rehab facility in early 2020. She was also single, coming out of an abusive on-and-off relationship with her ex-boyfriend and was grateful to be back at work on Scream 6.

Then, just three weeks before the film’s premiere in February 2023, the unthinkable happened: Her beloved younger brother Jansen died unexpectedly of an undiagnosed heart condition at just 28. Panettiere’s world was shattered.

“He was my only sibling, and it was my job to protect him,” she tells PEOPLE in a new interview for this week’s cover story. “When I lost him, I felt like I lost half of my soul.”

Panettiere, 35, soon decided she didn’t want to leave the house, especially after being followed by photographers in the days after his death.

“I had to see horrific paparazzi pictures of myself coming out of Jansen’s funeral, which happened in a very private place, and it was shocking,” she says. “My agoraphobia came out, which is something I’ve struggled with in the past.”

Compounding her grief, Panettiere’s body physically reacted to the shock, and within days she became virtually unrecognizable. “I just ballooned out,” she says of the rapid weight gain she experienced.

She says the “stress and cortisol” going through her body resulted in the change, which diminished her self esteem. “I didn’t feel confident to put on clothes and get out of the house, but I also knew that I needed to get out and keep moving or I’d never stop looking and feeling this way,” she says.

Adding, “It became a destructive hamster wheel of, do I feel good enough to go out?”