• Hayden Panettiere, 36, says she expects her 11-year-old daughter Kaya to one day date an older man, just like she did
• Panettiere dated Heroes co-star Milo Ventimiglia, then 30, when she was just 18 — a nearly 12-year age gap
• She defends the relationship, saying her family approved and she had “lived so much life” by 18
• The revelations come ahead of her memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, out May 19
• Panettiere also opened up about being “groomed” as a child star and her struggles with substance abuse

Hayden Panettiere isn’t shying away from the headlines her past has generated — and she’s not exactly bracing for history to repeat itself, either. The 36-year-old actress says she’s fully “ready and prepared” for her daughter to one day date a significantly older man, just as she did when she fell for Milo Ventimiglia at 18.

“That’s hard. My daughter’s 11, so I’m trying to think of how I would feel,” Panettiere told Entertainment Weekly in an exclusive interview tied to her upcoming memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning. “I’m sure she’s going to do exactly what Mommy did.”

Panettiere and Ventimiglia — now 48, and a father of two — met on the set of NBC’s Heroes in 2006, where she played cheerleader Claire and he played hospice nurse Peter. Their romance began in 2007, when she was 18 and he was 30, and lasted nearly two years before they called it quits in 2009. The nearly 12-year age gap drew plenty of scrutiny at the time, and it still does. But Panettiere has a clear-eyed answer for the critics.

“I was working with him all the time. My family knew him well,” she said. “At 18, I lived so much life that he almost couldn’t count me as being 18. So Milo and I, even though he was 30, had a lot more in common than people might think.”

She drew a firm line, though, between their situation and something genuinely concerning. “But if it was somebody that was inappropriate, if it came off inappropriate or was somebody that my parents were like, ‘No, this is just a creepy situation,’ then they never would’ve allowed it to happen.”

A Relationship She Thought Would Lead to Marriage

In a separate conversation with Us Weekly ahead of the book’s release, Panettiere revealed just how serious she was about Ventimiglia at the time. “Every relationship I’ve ever been in, I invested my whole self in,” she said. “I saw him as my partner and that it was going to hopefully keep going and evolving and lead to marriage.”

But there were cracks. One of them, she admits now, was telling. “It was a point of contention that 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,” she said. “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.”

When the end finally came, it blindsided her completely. Ventimiglia broke up with her — and then immediately walked it back when he saw her reaction.

“One hundred percent it was only because I was over the toilet, hysterically crying,” she told Us Weekly. “It was like my world had crumbled. It was so out of left field, nothing that big or explosive had happened. Nothing had really gone wrong. Nobody cheated. I remember the look on his face being pure shock at how visceral and massive my negative reaction was, and he immediately took it back.”

They reconciled briefly, then split for good. Not long after, Panettiere met Ukrainian boxing champion Wladimir Klitschko. They dated starting in 2009, got engaged in 2013, welcomed daughter Kaya in 2014, and ultimately ended their on-again, off-again relationship in 2018 — a chapter she also explores in the book.

Ventimiglia, for his part, has moved on fully. He married model Jarah Mariano in 2023, welcomed their first daughter, Ke’ala, in January 2025, and the couple recently announced they’re expecting their second child.

“I Was Groomed”: Panettiere on Her Childhood in Hollywood

The memoir doesn’t just revisit her love life. In a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, Panettiere opened up about something she’s rarely addressed so directly: what it actually felt like to grow up as a child star with no real say in the matter.

“I think it’s the way I was raised,” she said. “I was groomed. I was like a little soldier, and I always have been. No was never an option. It was just, ‘Here are your scenes, here’s your dialogue, memorize it, hit the marks, do what your director tells you to do.’ I took my marching orders.”

Panettiere first appeared on screen as an infant and had a regular TV role by age four. She’s been working ever since — and the cost of that, she says, eventually caught up with her.

“The pressure of that built and built and just exploded,” she said. “I started figuring out any way I could get through it. Sometimes they’ll say in treatment that, believe it or not, our addictions probably saved us at a certain point.”

She’s still working through what it all means. “That’s the thing — I will always wonder if I would have gravitated naturally towards acting if I had not been pushed into it,” she said. “But I see my daughter, at 11 years old, taking an interest.” This time, she says, she’s encouraging Kaya to explore it on her own terms.

All of it — the relationships, the childhood, the years she couldn’t fully speak about — is going into This Is Me: A Reckoning. “I’ve been in this industry for my entire life and there’ve been a lot of stories and preconceived ideas of who I am since I was about — that really started at 16 years old,” she told EW. “I get to tell people the truth. I get to tell them what really happened, and what really happened is generally more entertaining than anything that anyone could come up with.”

This Is Me: A Reckoning hits shelves May 19.

The post Hayden Panettiere Defends Her Age-Gap Romance With Milo Ventimiglia appeared first on Cream.

• Brian Hickerson says he still dreams of marrying Hayden Panettiere, admitting “I miss Hayden every day”
• Hickerson revealed a chilling incident he wanted cut from her memoir — threatening to throw a phone at her after a countdown
• He pleaded no contest to felony domestic violence charges and served jail time, probation, and a five-year restraining order
• Panettiere’s memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning drops May 19 and covers the abusive relationship in detail
• Hickerson confirmed he spoke with Hayden the day before his interview — she was nervous about the book’s release

Brian Hickerson still wants to marry Hayden Panettiere. That’s the headline he delivered himself — unprompted, emotional, and seemingly unaware of how complicated that admission is coming from the man who was convicted of felony domestic violence against her.

Sitting down with TMZ’s Charlie Neff ahead of Panettiere’s upcoming memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, Hickerson opened up about the former couple’s relationship in a way that was by turns remorseful, self-aware, and, at moments, deeply unsettling. When asked if he ever thinks about marrying the former Nashville actress, he didn’t hesitate. “Yeah, of course,” he said. And when pushed on whether he thinks it could ever actually happen: “I hope so — she probably doesn’t think the same way.”

He followed that up with something more grounded. “I think that Hayden is one of the most talented people I’ve ever met in my life, and I would be an idiot not to walk away from her and let her flourish in her career. So, we probably wouldn’t be good together.” He also said, plainly, that she “absolutely” deserves better than him. “I miss Hayden every day,” he added.

The Incident He Wanted Left Out

The interview took a harder turn when Hickerson revealed the specific moment from their relationship he begged Panettiere not to include in the book. She included it anyway.

“There’s a story where I was drunk,” he recalled. “Hayden was standing across the room and I had a phone in my hand and I said, ‘I’ll give you 10 seconds to run as fast as you can before I throw it at you.'”

He paused on that. “Who wants to read something about themselves, right? But you gotta be vulnerable and I did it. I did it, so.”

Hickerson and Panettiere dated on and off from 2018 to 2022 — a relationship that became increasingly public for all the wrong reasons. He was arrested multiple times for domestic violence incidents against her. In April 2021, he pleaded no contest to two felony counts of injuring a spouse or girlfriend and was sentenced to 45 days in county jail, four years probation, 52 mandatory domestic violence classes, and a five-year restraining order barring him from going near her.

He addressed the 2020 arrest directly: “I had a lot to drink and I got physical with her. I got arrested. Spent the night in jail and, you know, that’s just what happens when you lay hands on women.” And on the broader pattern of abuse: “You never lay hands on a woman, bottom line.”

On how their relationship looks in the memoir, he didn’t try to spin it. “I think it speaks for itself. I got arrested for abusing her, and I wouldn’t blame her friends for being pissed off at me. I don’t really have much to say on that.”

Working on Himself — and Rooting for Her

Hickerson said he’s been doing the work — AA meetings (he mentioned being in a group with Shia LaBeouf), therapy, and sitting with the weight of what he did. He also spoke about what he sees as a gap in how domestic violence is addressed culturally. “My biggest thing about domestic violence is I don’t think it is taught early enough in life. Never in my life did I ever get taught what domestic violence was. Maybe if I did at an early age, maybe I wouldn’t have done what I did.” He thinks the memoir could be an important read specifically for abusers — not just survivors.

“Hayden’s book is incredible,” he said. “I think everyone should read it. The domestic violence stuff — my chapter — everybody should read it.”

He confirmed he spoke with Panettiere just the day before his TMZ interview. “The conversation was about the book — it’s her first book, who wouldn’t be nervous about it? The only thing I said to her, I was like, ‘Look, dude, you’ve got one of the craziest stories I’ve ever heard in my life, and when people read it, it’s going to be a hit.'”

As for where they stand: “Our relationship right now is just a mutual respect thing. She’ll always hold a special place in my heart, and I hope the same for her. But yeah, we’re just good buddies.” The former couple was photographed together at an airport back in March, which had fans speculating about a rekindling — but Hickerson’s framing suggests it’s more complicated than that. He went into “such a dark place” during their relationship, he said — “drugs, alcohol” — and he seems to know, at least intellectually, that the distance is probably right.

Panettiere, 36, has described writing about that chapter of her life as “brutal, traumatic, and emotional.” In an interview with Us Weekly, she said: “It was important for me to word that experience properly. It’s a very embarrassing subject. I’ve always seen myself as such a resilient and strong woman. The idea that I could allow something like this to happen to me blew my mind. It blew the minds of the people that knew me best.”

This Is Me: A Reckoning hits shelves May 19.

If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, help is available. Call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, text START to 88788, or visit thehotline.org.

The post Brian Hickerson Still Wants to Marry Hayden Panettiere appeared first on Cream.

• Hayden Panettiere, 36, publicly came out as bisexual for the first time in an interview with Us Weekly.
• The revelation comes ahead of her memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning, out May 19 via Grand Central Publishing.
• Panettiere says she dated women from a very young age but kept it private due to paparazzi, industry pressure, and fear of being dismissed as following a trend.
• The memoir also covers childhood trauma, addiction, domestic abuse, the loss of her brother Jansen, and her complicated relationship with her mother.
• She says this is the first time she has ever said the word “bisexual” out loud about herself.

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.

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