While promoting her book with US Weekly in May, Panettiere revealed she was bisexual. She told the outlet: “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.”
She further explained: “That’s something about me I was never able to share with the world, because 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.
“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?”
When speaking about dating women she said: “Yeah, I did. It was scary, though, 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. 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.”