[Source: Entertainment Weekly]

Hayden Panettiere is ready to share her truth.

In a new interview with Us Weekly published on Wednesday, the actress comes out as bisexual — admitting that the process of writing her new memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, allowed her to be completely 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, 36, said.

She added, “It took two years to write this book, and I did not know what I was going to feel comfortable touching on … and what stories were naturally going to come up, and the fact that that did come up, I was like, ‘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.”

In the book, out May 19, Panettiere shares her attraction to women but admitted to Us she felt “afraid” to come out.

“I was not encouraged to just be myself,” she told the publication. “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 went on to say that she didn’t want it to feel like she was “jumping on the bandwagon.”

“It was a very difficult topic to articulate properly,” she continued.

“I 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?”

The Nashville star also opened up about her past experience dating women.

“It was always scary, because my life, I mean, there were paparazzi always outside, waiting for me outside, to follow me everywhere,” she said.

“I had very little privacy, and I mean, I have dated women. It started at a very, very young age.”

Panettiere, who appeared in commercials and soaps before gaining recognition for her role as Sheryl in 2000’s Remember the Titans, admitted she was “much more into women” than men when growing up.

“But, yeah, I have explored it, but I don’t think I ever had the courage, because I hadn’t shared this with anybody,” she told Us.

“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. I didn’t feel confident enough, and I was too afraid to really let that part of me explore that part of me.”