Hayden Panettiere‘s brother, Jansen Panettiere, has died, Us Weekly can confirm.
Jansen, a graffiti artist who frequently shared his work via Instagram, died at his home in Nyack, New York, on Sunday, February 19, per a police report obtained by Us on Tuesday, February 21. After Jansen didn’t show up to a business meeting, a friend went to check on him and found him “sitting upright in a chair unresponsive,” the report stated. Jansen’s pal called 911. He was pronounced dead by first responders after CPR was administered. The document also noted that there were “no obvious signs of trauma.”
Jansen and Hayden’s father, Alan “Skip” Panettiere, arrived on the scene and told police that he spoke to his son on the phone the night before and Jansen “sounded OK.”
Before becoming an artist, the late actor first followed in his sister’s footsteps in the entertainment world, getting his start on the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon in the early 2000s.
Per IMDb, Jansen kicked off his career in 2002 with a one-episode role on Even Stevens. Two years later, he voiced kitten Periwinkle on Blue’s Clues and nabbed the part of Joey in the Disney Channel Original Movie Tiger Cruise, starring Hayden, now 33.
The Hope & Faith alum continued to provide his voice to several different children’s programs throughout the decade, including starring as Truman X on the Patrick Warburton-led animated series The X’s. In 2006, he landed a voiceover role in the highly successful animated comedy Ice Age: The Meltdown portraying a young elephant named Shovelmouth Boy. One year later, Jansen scored the biggest role of his career by starring in the Nickelodeon original movie Last Day of Summer.
The artist acted sporadically since his work in the early 2000s; his final roles were in 2021’s Bart Bagalzby and the Garbage Genie and 2022’s Love and Love Not.
According to Jansen’s Instagram account, he focused primarily on his art career until his death. The Fog actor often posed photos of his pieces, mainly working with brightly-colored spray paint to create vivid graffiti-like abstract art.
On Saturday, February 18, the New York native shared two pieces of his work via Instagram. “I like this one. #rane,” he captioned the bold works of art.
Jansen — who was the uncle of Hayden’s 8-year-old daughter Kaya, whom she shares with ex Wladimir Klitschko — previously praised his sister in a sweet interview from when they were teens.
“She gets me a little more noticed; she gets me in magazines,” Jansen, who was 13 at the time, said of Hayden in an interview with TV Fanatic in 2007. “She gives me a kick-start. With The Last Day of Summer, they will notice me more because she is my sister. It is almost like you are looking in a book, and the bookmark is my sister and she is basically showing me, she is able to push me out there. She helps me tremendously.”
Hayden, for her part, joked at the time that she could still “beat him in a fight.” Jansen replied, “When I turn 14, dude, I’ll beat the shiitake mushrooms out of you.”
Jansen is survived by his sister, Hayden, and their parents, Lesley Vogel and Skip Panettiere.
