Hayden Panettiere comes out as bisexual: ‘Better late than never’

Hayden Panettiere has revealed that she is bisexual after being “afraid” to come out until now.

The Heroes alum, 36, discusses her sexuality for the first time in her upcoming memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, and ahead of its May 12 release, opened up in a new interview about why she waited to reveal her attraction to women.

“That’s something about me I was never able to share with the world, because it was just never the right time,” she told Us Weekly.

“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?”

Discussing her attempt to date women privately, Hayden admitted it had been challenging because of her celebrity status.

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

Hayden admitted that because she hadn’t publicly announced her bisexuality, she was never able to fully commit to a woman in the past.

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She explained: “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.”

Hayden added: “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. I said it! This is the first time I got to say it out loud.”

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Hayden was previously engaged to former world heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko, with whom she shares daughter Kaya Evdokia Klitschko, 11. The couple were together on-and-off for nine years before they separated in 2018.

The former boxer called off their wedding, only to propose again, but Hayden rejected the offer, and they ultimately split for good.

“It felt like my ego had been completely destroyed in seconds,” she told the outlet. “I had my book full of designs from my wedding dresses. We had traveled to Italy and had meetings with Armani. Everything was set up. 

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“In that moment, the fact that he could say that, I wasn’t gonna sit there and beg somebody to want to marry me. The only way I could think to have some sort of self-preservation and keep my confidence and not completely collapse… the best way I could think of to hurt him back, was to just blow it off.”

She added: “I was not going to give him the satisfaction of telling him how broken it made me. It wasn’t until years later that I got up the courage to ask him why. I was so upset with him that I wasn’t willing to be vulnerable like that.”