Hayden Panettiere comes out as bisexual: ‘I’ve chosen to share it with the world’
Hayden Panettiere pictured on Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024. (Nathan Congleton/NBC via Getty Images)
Hayden Panettiere has publicly revealed that she identifies as bisexual.
The actress shared the detail about her personal life in a new interview with Us Weekly that was published on Wednesday. In the interview, Panettiere said it was her experience writing about her life for her new memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, that helped her decide to share this part of herself.
“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,” Panettiere said.
The actress said she didn’t always know what she would be comfortable sharing about herself in the two years it took her to write the memoir. This did come up, and she decided, “Why not?”
“I’ve chosen to be completely brutally honest about this, and that’s something about me that I was never able to share with the world, because it was just never the right time,” Panettiere said.
The actress continued, detailing her attraction to women but also that she felt “afraid” to come out at first.
“I was not encouraged to just be myself,” she said. “Then it came, the period where it felt like people coming out, especially women coming out, and saying that they were bisexual or liked girls, was a fad.”
Panettiere didn’t want to be simply “jumping on the bandwagon,” as she put it, rather, she “wanted to make sure that I really sat down and chose my words carefully and was able to tell my story in an honest way, that people understood. On one hand, it’s sad that I had to wait till I was 36 years old to share that part of me, but better late than never, right?”
Actor Robert Duvall poses for a portrait during the 87th Academy Awards nominee luncheon at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Feb. 2, 2015 in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Jeff Vespa/Getty Images)
Robert Duvall, the Academy Award-winning actor known for roles in some of American cinema’s greatest films, including The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, has died at age 95.
“Yesterday we said goodbye to my beloved husband, cherished friend, and one of the greatest actors of our time. Bob passed away peacefully at home, surrounded by love and comfort,” read a statement posted on the actor’s official Facebook page by his wife, Luciana.
A statement from Duvall’s representative confirmed the actor’s death, reading in part, “Academy Award winning actor Robert Selden Duvall passed away peacefully in his home in Middleburg, Virginia, the evening of Sunday, February 15, 2026, with his wife Luciana Duvall by his side. He was 95.”
Duvall brought a signature naturalism to the roles he played, an unmannered style that infused his myriad characters with a calm intensity – a counterpoint to his self-confessed often hot-tempered on-set disposition – and earned him a reputation as one of his generation’s finest actors. Beginning with his memorable film debut as Boo Radley in 1962’s To Kill a Mockingbird, in which he didn’t utter a word, Robert Duvall went on to appear in more than 90 films over the next seven decades, working with some of Hollywood’s most celebrated filmmakers and performers.
Duvall shared the screen as the outlaw Ned Pepper opposite John Wayne in 1969’s True Grit, originated the role of Maj. Frank Burns in Robert Altman’s 1970 dark comedy M*A*S*H, and starred in the title role in Star Wars creator George Lucas’ 1971 directorial debut, THX 1138. Duvall also played Corleone family consigliere Tom Hagen in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather and The Godfather Part II opposite his acting hero, Marlon Brando, and had a pivotal role as the ruthless network VP Frank Hackett in the acclaimed 1976 media satire Network.
As the shirtless, cowboy hat-wearing Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore in Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now, Duvall delivered the film’s most oft-quoted line: “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” Four years later, Duvall won the Academy Award for best actor for playing Mac Sledge, a recovering alcoholic country music star attempting to make amends, in Tender Mercies.
Other career highlights included playing cynical sportswriter Max Murphy in the 1984 Robert Redford baseball fable The Natural; NASCAR crew chief Harry Hogge opposite Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in the 1990 action hit Days of Thunder; Sgt. Martin Prendergast, the retiring LAPD officer who spends his final day on the job pursuing Michael Douglas’ unhinged character in 1993’s Falling Down; and a criminal court judge accused of murder who’s defended by his estranged son, played by Robert Downey Jr., in the 2014 legal drama The Judge.
Of all his many celebrated acting roles, however, Duvall repeatedly said his favorite was that of retired Texas Ranger Augustus “Gus” McCrae in the 1989 TV Western miniseries Lonesome Dove. The series was one of several TV projects in which Duvall starred. Others included playing the title role in 1992’s HBO film drama Stalin, for which he won a Golden Globe – his fourth lifetime win – and the 2006 AMC Western miniseries Broken Trail, which earned Duvall a Primetime Emmy Award for outstanding lead actor, in addition to another for producing the series.
In total, Duvall was nominated for seven Academy Awards, the final three for his performances in 1997’s The Apostle, which he also wrote and directed; 1998’s A Civil Action, co-starring with John Travolta as a corrupt corporate attorney; and 2014’s The Judge. His nomination for The Judge, at age 84, then made him the oldest actor ever nominated in the best supporting actor category, until Christopher Plummer, at age 86, was nominated three years later for All the Money in the World.
Other notable later films in which Duvall appeared include The Handmaid’s Tale in 1990, 1996’s Sling Blade, 1998’s sci-fi action thriller Deep Impact, Crazy Heart in 2009 – this time with Jeff Bridges playing a down-on-his luck country singer – and as a shooting range owner in the 2012 Tom Cruise hit Jack Reacher.
In addition to his Oscar, Emmy and Golden Globe wins, Robert Duvall won a BAFTA and a Screen Actors Guild Award, the former for Apocalypse Now and the latter for A Civil Action, as well as dozens of other critical and popular award nominations and wins. He was also awarded the National Medal of Arts by then-President George W. Bush in 2005.
Duvall was married four times, most recently in 2005 to Luciana Pedraza, who survives him. He had no children.
Misha Collins (Malchemical), Antony Starr (Homelander), Jensen Ackles (Soldier Boy) and Jared Padalecki (Mister Marathon) in ‘The Boys.’ (Jasper Savage/Prime Video)
Eric Kripke, the showrunner of Prime Video’s The Boys, also created Supernatural, which ran for 15 seasons on The WB and then The CW. Kripke then cast that show’s star, Jensen Ackles, in The Boys as Soldier Boy, but the series’ latest episode is a full-on Supernatural reunion.
In the episode, Antony Starr’s Homelander and Ackles’ Soldier Boy go to LA to talk to a supe named Mister Marathon, who they’re told knows something about V1, a substance that can make Homelander immortal. Mister Marathon is played by Jared Padalecki, who costarred with Ackles as Sam Winchester in Supernatural.
“They brought him in as a bit of a cameo appearance,” Ackles told ABC Audio. “Kripke’s always got crazy ideas up his sleeve. This certainly was one of them,and we had a lot of fun.”
Also in that episode, Homelander and Soldier Boy encounter another supe, Malchemical, played by Misha Collins, who was Castiel in Supernatural.
“It was good to mix it up with him again, and with Misha as well, and see how they handled the deep end of the Kripke pool that is The Boys,” Ackles added. “I think they did OK, but it was fun to watch them struggle.”
What did the two struggle with? Well, let’s just say there’s a lot of blood and gore, several deaths and general mayhem.
By the way, there are a number of big-name stars who make cameos in that particular scene, in addition to the Supernatural guys. We won’t spoil it, except to say that, in a meta moment, one of them is Seth Rogen, who happens to be one of The Boys‘ executive producers.
Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon in the Hal Ashby-directed 1971 film, ‘Harold and Maude.’ (FilmPublicityArchive/United Archives via Getty Images)
Bud Cort, the actor known for his co-starring role in the 1971 film Harold and Maude, has died. He was 77.
Dorian Hannaway, a television producer and friend of Cort, confirmed Cort’s death to ABC News on Wednesday. Cort died of what was described as a long illness.
Cort was born Walter Edward Cox on March 29, 1948, in Rye, New York. Director Robert Altman discovered the actor and cast him in two 1970 films, M*A*S*H and Brewster McCloud, which both went on to be hits.
He earned a Golden Globe nomination for his role as Harold Chasen, a young man who falls in love with a 79-year-old Holocaust survivor played by Ruth Gordon, in director Hal Ashby’s Harold and Maude. The movie was selected to be preserved in the National Film Registry in 1997, as the Library of Congress deemed it to be “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.”
Other notable roles of his include parts in Michael Mann’s 1995 film Heat, the 1999 movie Dogma and Wes Anderson’s 2004 film The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. He also appeared in Coyote Ugly, Pollock, She Dances Alone and Electric Dreams.
Cort is survived by his brother, Joseph Cox, and his family; his sister Kerry Cox; his sister Tracy Cox Berkman and her family; and his sister Shelly Cox Dufour and her family.
