Hayden Panettiere has publicly come out as bisexual for the first time, telling US Weekly in a new interview that she held back for years because she was "not encouraged to just be myself."
The 36-year-old actor made the disclosure ahead of her memoir, "This Is Me: A Reckoning," which publishes May 19. Panettiere, who began her career as a child actor on soap operas including "One Life to Live" and "Guiding Light," said she had dated women starting "at a very, very young age" but stayed silent in public because of the professional and social pressures that came with her high-profile career.
"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 just never the right time, and it was a very difficult topic to articulate properly."
Part of her hesitation, she explained, was concern about perception. During a stretch when many women in the public eye were coming out as bisexual, Panettiere said she worried she would look like she was "jumping on the bandwagon." She described the calculation as exhausting.
"It's sad that I had to wait till I was 36 years old to share that part of me, but better late than never, right?" she said.
Panettiere grew up largely in public view. Paparazzi staked out her movements regularly, and she said she had "very little privacy" throughout her career. She had a voice role in Pixar's "A Bug's Life" as a child, became a recognizable face through Disney films including "Remember the Titans" and "Ice Princess," and reached wide television audiences playing Claire Bennet on NBC's "Heroes." More recently, she reprised her role as Kirby Reed in "Scream VI."
The memoir marks her first sustained public accounting of her private life. With its release weeks away, she said she now feels ready. "I'm comfortable saying I'm bisexual. I'm comfortable to confidently say that, yes, I am bisexual. I said it!"
