Hayden Panettiere Comes Out, Reveals When She Started Dating Women

Hayden Panettiere is living her truth!

The Heroes actress, 36, came out as bisexual ahead of the May 12 release of her memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning, which goes into her relationship with her sexuality.

“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,” she told Us Weekly in an interview published Wednesday. “I said it! This is the first time I got to say it out loud.”

Panettiere revealed that while she has dated women in the past, it was “scary” to do so while keeping her sexuality private.

“It was scary, because there were paparazzi always waiting for me outside, to follow me everywhere,” she said. “I had very little privacy. I have dated women. I was much more into women even as a child than I was men.”

The Nashville star, who shares 11-year-old daughter Kaya with ex Wladimir Klitschko, said that it was because of that fear that she was never able to fully commit to a relationship with a woman.

“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,” she said. “Because then if I did fall in love, that wasn’t something that I wanted to ever have to hide.”

As for why she’s waited to share her sexuality publicly, Panettiere explained, “It was just never the right time. 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.”

She continued, “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. 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?”

While the Scream alum has shared the ups and downs of her sobriety journey publicly before, she said that she was still “terrified” to open up so much in her upcoming memoir.

“The first thought that went through my head is, ‘Am I ready to write a book about my life?’ Then I started thinking through my life and going, ‘Gosh, truth is stranger than fiction. I have so many stories already to share,’” she told the outlet, adding, “I hope that by sharing them in this book, that it helps people to overcome the obstacles they’re going through.”