Hayden Panettiere is sharing her full self with the world.
The Heroes alum recently confirmed that she is bisexual—a topic she shares for the first time in her upcoming May 12 memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning—explaining how her relationship with her sexuality has shifted throughout her life in the spotlight.
“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,” she told Us Weekly in an interview published May 6. “I said it! This is the first time I got to say it out loud.”
Because for much of the 36-year-old’s life, she didn’t feel she was able to share her truth with the world.
“It was just never the right time,” she explained. “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.”