We anticipated Hayden Panettiere to have a breakthrough year in 2023.
The Amber Alert actor, who had suffered from drug and alcohol addiction for years, was clean and sober after completing an inpatient treatment program in early 2020. She was also single, having left an unpleasant on-and-off relationship with her ex-boyfriend, and was relieved to be back at work on Scream 6.
Then, just three weeks before the film’s release in February 2023, the unimaginable occurred: Jansen, her adored younger brother, died abruptly at the age of 28 from an undetected heart disease. Panettiere’s world was devastated.
“He was my only sibling, and it was my job to protect him,” she says 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, quickly realized that she didn’t want to leave the house, particularly after photographers began to follow her 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 admits. “My agoraphobia came out, which is something I’ve struggled with in the past.”
Panettiere’s body physically responded to the shock, exacerbating her sadness; by days, she was nearly unrecognizable. “I just ballooned out,” she recalls, referring to the sudden weight gain she had.
She asserts that “stress and cortisol” coursing through her body caused the alteration and lowered her self-esteem. “I didn’t feel secure enough to put on clothing and walk out of the home, but I also knew that I needed to get out and keep moving, or I’d never stop looking and feeling this way,” she recounts. ”
According to him, “It became a destructive hamster wheel of, do I feel good enough to go out?”
She wanted to return to work, but she needed the strength to break out of her rut. Her publicist introduced her to personal trainer Marnie Alton last year, and she claims everything changed for the better.
Panettiere began cautiously training with Alton, with whom she immediately trusted and connected. She especially enjoyed their long walks, where they would just speak and Panettiere would tell her stories from the past.
“These long, beautiful walks where we could vent, and it would be this therapy session,” she recounts. “Marnie empowered me.” The endorphins she received from burning fat also improved Panettiere’s mood.
“My body started reacting, and it wasn’t simply from working out. “It allowed me to let go of the stress and high expectations I had for myself,” she adds. As her anxieties receded, so did her agoraphobia. “There’s nothing like looking in the mirror and feeling like you look good enough to walk out the door,” she tells me.
She is still trying to cope with grief, but she describes the fresh perspective she acquired after Jansen’s death. “When something that massive has happened to you, you really learn to pick your fights and just not let the little things upset you,” she tells me. “Because once something so horrific, deep, and catastrophic happens in your life, there’s not much that can really rock you.”
Though she’s excited about the debut of her new film Amber Alert (in cinemas Sept. 27), she’s primarily thankful that she’s feeling more like herself every day. That does not imply she has recovered from the tragedy of Jansen’s death, nor will she ever.
“I’ll always be devastated about it. “I will never be able to get over it,” she admits. “No matter how many years go by, I will never get over his loss.”