Hayden Panettiere was met with support and praise after she opened up about her sexuality this week – but for her mother, the public announcement raised questions.
In an interview with Us Weekly to promote her upcoming memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, the 36-year-old actress revealed she is bisexual, telling the publication that she felt ‘sad’ at having to wait this long ‘to share that part of me.’
‘Now that I 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,’ she said. ‘I’m comfortable to confidently say that, yes, I am bisexual. I said it!’
Lesley Vogel, Panettiere’s estranged mother, was skeptical about the timing and suggested her daughter’s sexuality was not really a secret.
Reacting to her daughter’s public declaration, Vogel, 70, told the Daily Mail: ‘I do not believe it was being hidden, but there is no historic proof that this is the case.
‘I do think the timing of this coming out is very interesting.’
Hayden Panettiere came out as bisexual in a new interview this week while promoting her upcoming memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning (pictured in 2022)
Her estranged mom, Lesley Vogel, questioned the timing of her daughter’s coming out in a statement shared with the Daily Mail. (Panettiere is pictured with her mom and late brother Jansen in 2019)
In the explosive new interview, Panettiere confessed to secretly dating women, whom she preferred to men from ‘a very, very young age.’
‘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,’ she told Us Weekly.
‘I didn’t feel confident enough, and I was too afraid to really let that part of me explore that part of me.’
Panettiere addressed the status of her relationship with her mom during her Us Weekly interview, and said the door is open for a future reconciliation.
‘Unfortunately, we don’t have a relationship right now,’ she said of her mom. ‘But that doesn’t mean that I don’t leave the door open for the opportunity to present itself one day.’
But her mom – who told the Daily Mail that their estrangement was a ‘recent occurrence,’ claiming it began around ‘mid-September’ of 2025 – sounded less hopeful.
‘We each are entitled to choose our path in life,’ Vogel told the Daily Mail. ‘After 20 years of trauma, chaos, addictions [and] accusations, I felt I had no other option but to choose no contact.’
She added: ‘There will forever be a lingering hope that she will find her own path to inner peace.’
Vogel, 70, said of her estrangement from her daughter, 36: ‘After 20 years of trauma, chaos, addictions, accusations, I felt I had no other option but to choose no contact’
Panettiere’s memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, comes out on May 19
Vogel confirmed that she has not read Panettiere’s upcoming memoir, out on May 19, which she presumably was not sent given their estrangement.
Panettiere has said that she gets ‘brutally honest’ in the book about her mother pushing her too hard and doubling as her manager.
‘I was so scared of her that approaching her and being honest about my feelings [back then] was not going to get me any positive reaction. This is my way of doing it,’ she told Us Weekly.
She also dives into her struggles with substance abuse, postpartum depression and the sudden loss of her younger brother, Jansen, who unexpectedly died in 2023. He was 28.
He suffered from an enlarged heart and aortic valve complications. Before his death, he too struggled with substance abuse. Panettiere, for her part, has struggled with alcohol and opiate abuse.
‘I was shocked that it had gotten that bad,’ she said, referencing her brother’s use of crack and heroin. ‘When he said that he had put those two substances in his body, I was floored. I should have understood better than anybody what he was going through. And of all the people that could have saved him from passing away, it should have been me.’
With her brother gone and her mother estranged, the actress is close to her father, Alan Lee ‘Skip’ Panettiere, and her stepmother, Mekdem.
‘My dad and I have a great relationship,’ she told the publication. ‘I actually went and lived with him and my stepmom for a while, where I was born and raised in Rockland County, and felt like being at home re-grounded me. Being around family reminded me of who I am at my core.’
Panettiere split from Wladimir Klitschko in 2018 after nine years (pictured in 2013)
Speaking on her current relationship with Klitschko and her daughter Kaya, she said: ‘I have an incredible relationship with both of them’
Panettiere also opened up about her struggle with postpartum depression which she said felt like she was ‘incapable of being a semi-decent mom’ to her daughter Kaya, now 11.
‘I was nowhere near the mom that I had sworn to myself that one day I was going to be and that was devastating,’ Panettiere said.
‘[It] was heartbreaking. I’m such a perfectionist in so many ways that being at least a good mother was just so, so important to me. And such a crushing blow when I was incapable of being, an even semi-decent mom, in my mind.’
She lost custody of her daughter to her ex-fiancé and retired heavyweight boxer Wladimir Klitschko, who lives in Ukraine, while she sought treatment. She and Klitschko amicably split in 2018 after a nine-year on-off relationship.
As of today, she maintains a healthy relationship with her daughter and her ex.
‘I have an incredible relationship with both of them,’ she said. ‘I’m so grateful for Wlad. We’re very close, and have had a deep friendship, along with a relationship, since I met him when I was 19.’
The Daily Mail has reached out to Panettiere’s representative for comment.
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