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

“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. 

“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.”

“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…