Highlights
- Hayden Panettiere, 36, comes out as bisexual ahead of her May 12 memoir release
- She says Hollywood pressure and fear of the “bandwagon” kept her quiet for years
- Panettiere confirms she’s dated women and was “more into women” even as a child
She finally said it — out loud, for the whole world to hear.
Hayden Panettiere has officially come out as bisexual, dropping the news while promoting her upcoming memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, due out May 12. And she’s not holding anything back.
The Heroes alum sat down with Us Weekly for an interview published May 6, where she confirmed her sexuality for the very first time. “Now that I know that this book is coming out, and that I’ve chosen to share it with the world, I’m comfortable to confidently say that yes, I am bisexual. I said it! This is the first time I got to say it out loud.”
The 36-year-old has spent most of her life in the public eye — from Heroes to Nashville — but this is a side of herself she’s kept private. And she’s got some real, valid reasons why it took this long.
“That’s something about me I was never able to share with the world, because it was just never the right time,” she told Us Weekly. “It was either I was too young, and I was being forced to be perfect at all times. I was not encouraged to just be myself.”
And then there was the whole “trend” problem.
“Then came the period where it felt like people coming out, especially women, saying that they were bisexual or liked girls, was a fad. I was afraid that if I was honest, it was going to be like me jumping on the bandwagon. It was a very difficult topic to articulate properly.”
She’s not wrong — there was absolutely a stretch of time when bisexual women in pop culture were either dismissed or accused of doing it for attention. No wonder she held back.
Although she has some remorse about the timing, Panettiere is clearly relieved to have finally found the strength to be her authentic self. “It’s sad I had to wait until I was 36 years old to share that part of me, but better late than never, right?”
But here’s the thing — Hayden wasn’t just theoretically attracted to women. She’s actually dated them.
“Yeah, I did. It was scary, though, because there were paparazzi always waiting for me outside, to follow me everywhere. I had very little privacy. I have dated women. I was much more into women even as a child than I was men.”
That last line is a lot to sit with. She’s known this about herself since childhood — and still, the machine of Hollywood stardom made it nearly impossible to live openly.
She also admitted that because she hadn’t publicly announced her bisexuality, she was never able to fully commit to a woman in the past. “I have explored it, but because I hadn’t shared this with anybody, I didn’t really have the courage to throw myself fully emotionally into it. Because then if I did fall in love, that wasn’t something that I wanted to ever have to hide.”
Looking back, Panettiere can now see why some of her early relationships didn’t work out — specifically her public romance with Heroes co-star Milo Ventimiglia from 2007 to 2009. Though she says she “invested my whole self” in the relationship, she couldn’t bring herself to fully say “I love you” to him. “I was unable to put the ‘I’ in front of ‘love you’ and at the time, I didn’t realize or understand why it made me feel so uncomfortable,” Panettiere reflected. “I could only say ‘love you’ in a casual way.”
Wow. That realization had to hit hard.
Hayden also shares daughter Kaya, 11, with ex-fiancé Wladimir Klitschko, and says she now has “an incredible relationship” with both her daughter and the former heavyweight champ. “We’re very close, and have had a deep friendship, along with a relationship, since I met him when I was 19.”
Panettiere’s current relationship status is unclear — she had been in an on-and-off relationship with real estate agent Brian Hickerson, and they’ve been spotted together as recently as this past March, though TMZ reported they are just friends.
Whatever comes next for her romantically, one thing is clear: Hayden Panettiere is done keeping this part of herself in the shadows. Her memoir drops May 12, and something tells us it’s going to be one hell of a read.
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