Hayden Panettiere is looking back on her 12-year age gap romance with Heroes costar Milo Ventimiglia, revealing that she’d considered marrying him before their breakup.
“Every relationship I’ve ever been in, I invested my whole self in,” Panettiere, 36, exclusively tells Us Weekly on this week’s cover story while discussing her memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, out May 19. “I saw him as my partner and that it was going to hopefully keep going and evolving and result in marriage.”
She goes on, “It was some extent of contention that I used to be unable to place the ‘I’ in front of ‘love you’ and on the time, I didn’t realize or understand why it made me feel so uncomfortable. I could only say ‘love you’ in an informal way. Being older, he was far more aware of what that meant. And that said quite a bit.”
The massive age gap between the costars — Panettiere was 18 and Ventimiglia was 30 once they began dating — generated numerous public chatter through the two-year relationship.
Panettiere and Ventimiglia originally got together in 2007 before going their separate ways in February 2009. On the time, a source exclusively told Us that there was “a life-style conflict” and that the Heroes costars were in “very different places.”
Looking back on that tumultuous time, Panettiere shares with Us that the ultimate days of her relationship with Ventimiglia were hectic, as he broke up together with her after which immediately took her back when she began “hysterically” crying. The 2 ultimately split for good a short while later.
Asked whether she thought Ventimiglia only took her back due to her tears, she admits to Us, “A hundred percent it was only because I used to be over the bathroom, hysterically crying. It was like my world had crumbled.”
“It was so out of left field, nothing that big or explosive had happened. Nothing had really gone flawed. No person cheated,” she points out. “I remember the look on his face being pure shock at how visceral and big my negative response was, and he immediately took it back.”
Milo Ventimiglia and Hayden Panetierre in July 2007 in Hollywood, California. Michael Buckner/Getty Images
Panettiere met boxer Wladimir Klitschko not long after splitting from Ventimiglia and so they were ultimately together on and off from 2009 to 2018. (They welcomed a daughter, Kaya Evdokia Klitschko, in December 2014.)
The Nashville alum officially comes out as bisexual in her memoir, revealing that she never felt comfortable discussing her attraction to women until recently.
“It was at all times the fear of not being perfect, and what my team was going to give it some thought, what the general public’s opinion was going to be about it,” she tells Us. “It was just never the fitting time, and it was a really difficult topic to articulate properly. I desired to be sure that that I actually sat down and selected my words fastidiously and was in a position to tell my story in an honest way, that folks understood. On one hand, it’s sad that I had to attend till I used to be 36 years old to share that a part of me, but higher late than never, right?”
Rollercoaster romance. Hayden Panettiere and Brian Hickerson’s relationship has been marred by legal trouble because the couple were first linked in August 2018. The Nashville alum moved on with Hickerson after her split from fiancé Wladimir Klitschko. Panettiere and the previous skilled boxer began dating in 2009. The pair briefly broke up in 2011 but got engaged […]
Panettiere adds, “Now that I do know that this book is coming out, and that I’ve chosen to share it with the world, I’m comfortable saying I’m bisexual. I’m comfortable to confidently say that, yes, I’m bisexual. I said it!”
This Is Me: A Reckoning hits shelves on Tuesday, May 19.