A New Perspective on a Past Relationship
Hayden Panettiere is taking a fresh look at her teenage romance with Milo Ventimiglia, now with the benefit of time and motherhood. At 18, she was in a relationship with her co-star, who was 30 years old. While the age gap still sparks questions, the actress is now viewing that chapter of her life through the lens of being a parent. In her upcoming book, This Is Me: A Reckoning, Panettiere reflects on why the relationship made sense to her at the time and how her family saw it.
In an exclusive interview about her book, Panettiere discussed the nearly 12-year age gap between her and Ventimiglia, drawing parallels to her own daughter’s future choices. “That’s hard. My daughter’s 11, so I’m trying to think of how I would feel,” she said when asked about dating Ventimiglia when she was 18 and he was 30. She also admitted that she can already imagine Kaya making similar choices as she grows older. “I’m sure she’s going to do exactly what Mommy did,” the actress continued. “I’m ready and prepared for it, but I think it’s about the person. I was working with him all the time. My family knew him well. I was also… At 18, I lived so much life that he almost couldn’t count me as being 18. So Milo and I, even though he was 30, had a lot more in common than people might think.”
Panettiere also spoke about Ventimiglia earlier this month while discussing the memoir with Us Weekly. She shared that she gave herself fully to every relationship and saw Ventimiglia as someone who could become a long-term partner. “Every relationship I’ve ever been in, I invested my whole self in,” she told them when asked about Ventimiglia. “I saw him as my partner, and that it was going to hopefully keep going and evolving and lead to marriage.”
The Nashville alum also reflected on one emotional issue from that relationship. “But it was a point of contention that I was unable to put the ‘I’ in front of ‘love you’ and at the time, I didn’t realize or understand why it made me feel so uncomfortable. I could only say ‘love you’ in a casual way,” she said. “Being older, he was much more aware of what that meant. And that said a lot.”
While Panettiere writes positively about the Gilmore Girls alum in her book, she also reveals that their first breakup became a painful low point. In This Is Me: A Reckoning, she says Ventimiglia ended things but took her back a week later after seeing how emotional she became. Panettiere described that brief reconciliation in raw detail. “One hundred percent, it was only because I was over the toilet, hysterically crying,” she said of their brief reconciliation. “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 wrong. Nobody cheated. I remember the look on his face being pure shock at how visceral and massive my negative reaction was, and he immediately took it back.”
Not long after their second breakup, Panettiere met Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko. The two later had an on-again, off-again relationship and welcomed their daughter, Kaya. They ended their relationship in 2018, and Panettiere also explores that chapter in the book. Now, Panettiere says This Is Me: A Reckoning gives her the chance to tell her own story after years of public assumptions.
