Hayden Panettiere Says She Is Bisexual at 36

hayden panettiere said in a May 6 interview that she is bisexual, making the disclosure publicly for the first time at 36. The timing lands less than a week before her memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, is released on May 12.

May 6 Interview

“This is the first time I got to say it out loud,” Panettiere said in the interview. She 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,” a direct link between the memoir rollout and the disclosure.

“It was just never the right time,” she said, describing a long delay that lasted through years of public attention. Panettiere said, “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?”

Dating Women Privately

Panettiere said the stakes felt sharper because “there were paparazzi always waiting for me outside, to follow me everywhere. I had very little privacy.” She said, “I have dated women. I was much more into women even as a child than I was men,” adding that she had explored those relationships but did not “have the courage to throw myself fully emotionally into it.”

That hesitation came from a simple calculation: “Because then if I did fall in love, that wasn’t something that I wanted to ever have to hide.” The public disclosure now turns private history into part of the sales pitch for the book, and it gives readers a clearer frame for what the memoir is trying to cover.

Memoir May 12

Panettiere said writing the book itself frightened her. “I was terrified,” she said, then described the first question she asked herself: “Am I ready to write a book about my life?”

She ultimately settled on a purpose that goes beyond biography. “I hope that by sharing them in this book, that it helps people to overcome the obstacles they’re going through,” she said. For readers, the useful takeaway is plain: the bisexual disclosure is not a side note but part of the memoir’s core story, and the next thing to watch is whether the book’s release on May 12 turns that personal admission into a bigger discussion of her life in public.