Hayden Panettiere has come out as bisexual, admitting that she’s saddened she had to wait so long to “share that part” of herself.
The Bring It On star, 36, who opens up about her sexuality in her forthcoming memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, explained in a new interview why she wasn’t able to do so sooner.
“That’s something about me I was never able to share with the world, because it was just never the right time,” Panettiere 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.”
She said she realized her attraction to women at a time when “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,” she added. “It was a very difficult topic to articulate properly. 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?”
Panettiere confirmed that she has dated women. “It was scary, though, because there were paparazzi always waiting for me outside, to follow me everywhere. I had very little privacy,” she said.
“I was much more into women even as a child than I was men. 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,” the Nashville alum continued.
“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.”
In the past, Panettiere has publicly dated male co-stars, including One Tree Hill’s Stephen Colletti and Heroes co-star Milo Ventimiglia, who is 12 years her senior.
Following the end of her two-year relationship with Ventimiglia, she dated Ukrainian former professional boxer Wladimir Klitschko on and off for nine years, from 2009 to 2018. They became engaged in 2013 and welcomed their daughter, Kaya, the next year.
By 2018, they split, and Panettiere relinquished custody of Kaya to Klitschko amid her struggle with addiction to alcohol and pills.
“It was the hardest thing I could do. But the best thing for my daughter was to make sure she was okay, take care of myself and make sure I could be a good mom to her. And sometimes that means letting go,” she told People in 2022.
Panettiere later dated Brian Hickerson. Their tumultuous relationship was marked by serious domestic violence incidents and ended with Hickerson serving a 45-day jail sentence after pleading no contest to two felony counts of injuring a spouse or cohabitant in 2021.
This Is Me: A Reckoning is out May 12.