Hayden Panettiere is opening up about her sexuality for the first time.
The actress came out as bisexual in her “This Is Me: A Reckoning” memoir, out May 19, and discussed it in an interview with Us Weekly.
“Now … that I’ve chosen to share it with the world, I’m comfortable to confidently say that yes, I am bisexual,” the “Heroes” alum, 36, told the outlet on Wednesday. “I said it! This is the first time I got to say it out loud.”
While Panettiere never felt it was “the right time” to share her sexuality publicly, she quipped it’s “better late than never.”
The “Nashville” alum pointed out that when she was young, she was “being forced to be perfect at all times” and “not encouraged to just be [her]self.”
She added, “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.”
Panettiere clarified that she has “dated women” over the years.
“It was scary, though, because there were paparazzi always waiting for me outside to follow me everywhere,” she recalled, noting that she was “much more into women even as a child than … men.”
The Golden Globe nominee continued, “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.”
Panettiere made headlines in 2009 when she spoke about “occasions when you kiss your best friend growing up” while discussing a “Heroes” storyline in which her character, Claire Bennet, hooked up with her roommate.
She called the scene “very exciting,” according to Pride, saying, “When you are young, you experiment and you have fun.”
Panettiere split from her co-star Milo Ventimiglia that same year, moving on with Wladimir Klitschko, with whom she shares daughter Kaya.
After their on-again, off-again relationship, Panettiere had a volatile, allegedly abusive romance with Brian Hickerson from 2018 to 2022.
She called the experience “traumatic” and “brutal” on Wednesday, saying, “Getting an abusive person out of your life is like trying to rip a weed out that is so entangled into your life, every time you pull it out another weed pops back up and you’re like, ‘I thought I killed this.’
“They always manage to find a way to slither back in, even if you’re an incredibly strong-willed person,” Panettiere continued. “I struggled to fully put a kibosh to it for a while.
Elsewhere in the interview, the former soap star discussed her addiction struggles, her grief over late brother Jansen Panettiere’s death and more.
If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call the Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-330-0226.