Hayden Panettiere pulls back the curtain on his short love affair with Laguna Beach‘s Stephen Colletti about 20 years after quitting.
“I’m very grateful that you’ve been a part of my life, especially when you’ve been around,” Panettiere, 36, revealed exclusively to him. Us Weekly cover story on newsstands now. “Because when I was with him that’s when I started dealing with the paparazzi and the tabloids and focusing on them.”
Panettiere attributes that to Colletti’s time at MTV Laguna Beach – in which he played from 2004 to 2005 – that kind of attention “was something he had never experienced before.”
“[He] he was able to guide me through that experience and getting used to it,” Panettiere recalled, noting that Colletti, 40, was “very protective of me.”
I Nashville The alum notes that Colletti treated the media “very leniently.”
“He never seemed to be himself [or] he came off as a bad guy,” Panettiere said Us of the former star reality. So I knew there was a way to protect myself and set boundaries without being offensive or disrespectful.
Panettiere and Colletti dated for almost two years after getting hitched in 2006, and according to the actress, their breakup was not scandalous or controversial. (They parted ways at the end of 2007.)
“We just ended up breaking up, there was really no issue,” he said. “Like, no drama.”
Hayden Panettiere, Stephen Colletti.
Michael Buckner / Getty ImagesI Heroes The alum revealed that she “met him for the first time years ago” and it was a pleasant surprise.
“I think he’s going to be a father and I’m very happy for him,” added Panettiere. “We don’t always contact each other the way I would have liked us to, because he is a high-level person, but there was no drama.”
He reiterates, “There’s really no story” about their breakup. “It was peaceful and kind,” Panettiere said Us laughing.
Panettiere has had many high-profile relationships since her Hollywood debut, which began in the early 1990s as a child star.
Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Hayden Panettiere is publicly coming out as bisexual for the first time. “The first time it even crossed my mind to touch on this story was when I was writing this book,” Panettiere, 36, exclusively tells Us Weekly in this week’s cover story while talking about himself. […]
Colletti was one of her first public lovers – but her love life was already in the headlines after she dated her high school sweetheart. Kristin Cavallari to Laguna Beach and flirted with a longtime friend Lauren “LC” Conrad on the show in the early 2000s.
After Laguna BeachColletti continued to play One Tree Hill and later merged Everyone Does Morewhere he plays again. He got married Alex Weaver in 2025 and are expecting their first child together.
Panettiere, on the other hand, continued until now Heroes the costar Milo Ventimiglia12 years older than him, from 2007 to 2009.
This actress is dating a boxer Wladimir Klitschko from 2009 to 2013 before getting engaged that year. The pair welcomed their daughter, Kaya, in December 2014. Panettiere and Klitschko, 50, split amicably in August 2018.
Panettiere continued with Brian Hickerson in 2018, but split in 2020 after going to jail for domestic violence. (Hickerson was charged in 2020 with four counts of domestic assault, one count of misdemeanor battery, two counts of assault with a deadly weapon, and one count of disqualifying a witness, Panettiere, from the prosecution. He was sentenced to 45 days in jail after pleading guilty to two counts).
Panettiere has come out as bisexual, detailing her journey in her new memoir, It’s Me: Countinghits shelves on Tuesday, May 19.
For more information on Panettiere’s love life and past romances, pick up the latest issue of Us Weeklyon newsstands now.
