Hayden Panettiere, born August 21, 1989, is an American actress and singer. She is best known for her work in the television series Heroes and Nashville.
Panettiere is the daughter of a former soap opera actress and a father who is a captain in the New York Fire Department, growing up in part in Palisades, New York. She began acting work at a young age, landing her first commercial for Playskool at eleven months old. She landed a steady stream of acting work throughout her childhood in film and television, including but not limited to: Ally McBeal, Malcolm in the Middle, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, A Bug’s Life, Ice Princess, Message In A Bottle, and Remember the Titans, and award-winning work on the soap opera Guiding Light as a child with leukemia, which raised greater awareness about the disease. After middle school, Panettiere was home-schooled through to graduating from high school due to the demands of her acting schedule.
Panettiere gained worldwide recognition with her breakthrough role on the network show Heroes as Claire Bennet, a high school cheerleader with healing powers. This launched her career as a leading lady, including turns in I Love You, Beth Cooper and in a recurring role in the Scream movie franchise. She also starred in the musical TV show Nashville, where she sang and recorded several songs for the show’s soundtrack. She has also landed several lucrative high-level modeling contracts over the years for Neutrogena, Kohl’s, and Dooney and Burke purses. Her fame also gave her a platform for her activist work with animal rights groups, including preventing overfishing by interfering with and stopping parts of the dolphin hunt in Japan (as seen in the documentary The Cove) and excessive whale hunting in Alaska.
In 2009 she met Ukranian heavyweight boxing champion Wladimir Kitschko. The pair became engaged in 2014 and welcomed a daughter in 2014. However, Panettiere suffered severe postpartum depression and, in 2018, relinquished full custody to Kitschko so she could cope with her postpartum as well as addiction issues. However, as of 2026, she and Kitschko now enjoy a co-parenting relationship.
Regarding her bisexuality, in May 2026, Panettiere came out in advance of her memoir, This is Me: A Reckoning. From her interview with US Weekly:
Something no one knew about you was your attraction to women, which you discuss in your book.
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?
You said that you haven’t fallen in love with a woman, and there are probably multiple reasons for that. Have you ever tried dating women?
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.
Given where you are today, do you think about yourself with any labels? Is it bisexual? Queer?
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.