Hayden Panettiere is getting more honest than ever before in her upcoming memoir. The actor reveals in the book that she’s been hiding her bisexuality for years, but is finally at a point where she’s ready to be open about her attraction to women. Even though she knew she wasn’t straight from a very young age, Panettiere said that she avoided coming out for years due to the pressures of child stardom as well as the fear of people accusing her of “jumping on the bandwagon” when bisexuality was written off as “a fad.”
“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 while promoting her memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning, out May 12. “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. 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.”
Although she has some remorse about waiting to come out publicly, Panettiere is excited that she’s finally found the strength to be her authentic self. “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,” she said. “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?”
Throughout her life in the public eye, Panettiere has been exclusively linked to men. However, she revealed that she has had romances with women before, but her insistence on keeping those relationships a secret proved incredibly stressful. “I have dated women. I was much more into women even as a child than I was men … It was scary, though, because there were paparazzi always waiting for me outside, to follow me everywhere. I had very little privacy,” Panettiere said. “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. Being older, he was much more aware of what that meant. And that said a lot.”
Panettiere’s current relationship status is unclear. She had been in an on-and-off relationship with real estate agent Brian Hickerson for the past several years. They’ve been spotted together as recently as this March, though TMZ reported they are just friends.
