Hayden Panettiere Comes Out as Bisexual at 36

Hayden Panettiere has something she’s been waiting 36 years to say out loud.

“I’m comfortable to confidently say that yes, I am bisexual,” the Heroes and Nashville alum told Us Weekly in an interview published May 6. “I said it! This is the first time I got to say it out loud.”

The admission came as Panettiere opens up about her life in her upcoming memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, which drops May 19. The book took two years to write and covers, by her own description, everything — addiction, love, loss, abuse, and the very specific chaos of growing up famous. Her sexuality, she says, wasn’t something she planned to address when she sat down to write it. It just came up naturally, and she decided to go there.

“The first time it even crossed my mind to touch on this subject was while I was in the process of writing this book,” she said. “I did not know what I was going to feel comfortable touching on… and the fact that that did come up, I was like, ‘Why not?’”

Why She Waited So Long

Panettiere has known she was attracted to women since she was a child — she says she was “much more into women even as a child than I was men” — but the path to saying so publicly was long and full of obstacles, some external, some internal.

“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 explained. “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.”

She didn’t want her truth dismissed as a trend. So she stayed quiet. And the longer she stayed quiet, the harder it got.

“And once again, it was always the fear of not being perfect, and what my team was going to think about it, what the public’s opinion was going to be about it,” she said. “It was a very difficult topic to articulate properly. I wanted to make sure that I really sat down and chose my words carefully.”

There was also the very practical reality of being one of the most photographed young women in Hollywood. Panettiere says she did date women — it started, she says, “at a very, very young age” — but the constant presence of paparazzi made those relationships feel impossible to protect.

“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 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.”

She hasn’t fallen in love with a woman — yet. But the fear of having to conceal that love is what kept her from ever fully letting herself get there.

Looking back at her relationship with Heroes co-star Milo Ventimiglia, she can now see how her unspoken inner life was already creating distance. The two dated from 2007 to 2009, when she was 18 and he was 29. She says she was fully invested — “I saw him as my partner and that it was going to hopefully keep going and evolving and lead to marriage” — but there was one thing she could never bring herself to do.

“It was a point of contention that I was unable to put the ‘I’ in front of ‘love you,’” she 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.”

“It’s sad I had to wait until I was 36 years old to share that part of me,” she added. “But better late than never, right?”

A Memoir That Holds Nothing Back

Her sexuality is just one thread in what sounds like an extraordinarily raw book. This Is Me: A Reckoning covers ground that Panettiere has never publicly addressed — and some of it is genuinely alarming.

At 16, while doing press for Heroes, a representative gave her non-prescribed “happy pills” imported from Mexico. “I trusted her wholeheartedly,” she said. “I never in a million years thought to protect myself or question it.” That early introduction to substances would eventually spiral into a full-blown addiction that led to three separate stints in rehab.

The memoir also goes deep on her six seasons playing Juliette Barnes on Nashville — a character whose storylines about alcoholism, postpartum depression, and abandoning her child mirrored Panettiere’s own life with an almost surreal precision. She says the writers leaned into her real emotional range without anyone stopping to ask whether it was okay.

“They cared if the way it was affecting me had a negative impact on filming or on the show. But there was very little concern about my mental and emotional state,” she said. “I turned into Juliette Barnes. Juliette Barnes was me. I didn’t know where Hayden started and Juliette ended. Very few people took the time to come up to me and ask if I was OK. I don’t know that they wanted to know.”

She also writes about years of domestic abuse at the hands of ex Brian Hickerson — describing the experience of trying to leave an abusive relationship with a vividness that will resonate with anyone who has been there. “Getting an abusive person out of your life is like trying to rip a weed out that is so entangled into your life,” she said. “Every time you pull it out another weed pops back up. They always manage to find a way to slither back in, even if you’re an incredibly strong-willed person.” In 2020, Hickerson was charged with multiple domestic assault felonies and ultimately sentenced to 45 days in jail after pleading no contest to two felony counts of injuring a spouse or girlfriend. TMZ has reported the two were spotted together as recently as this past March, though sources say they are now just friends.

Her third and final rehab stint — eight months long — came after a doctor told her plainly that her body was shutting down. Her eyes had turned yellow from jaundice. She began researching liver transplants. “He told me, in no uncertain terms, that if you do not put a stop to this right now, your body’s not going to be able to recover,” she said.

That stay saved her life. And it was followed, cruelly, by one of the worst losses she’s ever faced.

The Loss She’s Still Processing

Panettiere’s younger brother, Jansen — who was also an actor — died after struggling with crack and heroin addiction. She had tried to get him into treatment, kept standing appointments with his therapist, did everything she could think of. It wasn’t enough.

“Of all the people that could have saved him from passing away, it should have been me,” she said. “But you realize that you can’t love somebody out of a situation like that if they’re not ready or willing to heal.”

Three years later, it still hits her the hardest of everything in the book. When she recorded the audiobook, that section broke her. “Every time it’s his anniversary of his death, or his birthday, it’s actually gotten more and more painful,” she said. “It’s still a struggle to combat the feeling of failure and guilt.”

Where She Is Now

The heaviness of everything she’s been through is real — but so is where she’s landed. Panettiere describes an “incredible” relationship with her ex-fiancé Wladimir Klitschko, the former heavyweight boxing champion, and their 11-year-old daughter Kaya, who lives in Europe. In 2018, Klitschko demanded Panettiere relinquish custody while she was struggling with addiction — a moment she calls “absolutely one of the worst days of my life.” But she says she understands it now.

“I’m so grateful for Wlad. We’re very close, and have had a deep friendship, along with a relationship, since I met him when I was 19,” she said. “And my daughter, she’s just an incredible gift. She’s otherworldly and so kind and so fierce and surrounded by good people. She’s just the best thing — all the best parts of me and Wlad.”

When Russia’s war against Ukraine broke out in 2022, Panettiere flew to be with Kaya as Klitschko and his brother Vitali fought on the front lines. She sat her daughter down and asked if she had any questions. Kaya had just one: “Why is Putin doing this?” Panettiere laughs that it was the one question she truly couldn’t answer.

As for her relationship with her mother, Lesley Vogel — who pushed her into the industry starting at 8 months old — Panettiere says there’s no relationship right now. The memoir is, in part, her way of finally having that conversation. “I was so scared of her that approaching her and being honest about my feelings was not going to get me any positive reaction,” she said. “This is my way of doing it.” She leaves the door open, though. Just barely.

She’s also dealing with the fact that a stalker who spent years terrorizing her — sending threats, flooding her phone, forcing her to cancel public appearances — was recently released from prison after serving 30 months. “He’s now out,” she said simply. “That’s just a daunting… that’s the reality of the situation.”

Through all of it, Panettiere sounds like someone who has earned the right to finally just be herself — in every sense. Coming out as bisexual is one piece of that. A big one, but still just one piece.

“I think people will be surprised by what they learn,” she said of the memoir.

This Is Me: A Reckoning is out May 19.