The actress predicts her 11-year-old daughter would do the same in the future.

Hayden Panettiere reflects on dating 30-year-old Milo Ventimiglia when she was 18

The actress predicts her 11-year-old daughter would do the same in the future.

By Sarah Hearon

May 15, 2026 3:04 p.m. ET

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Milo Ventimiglia and Hayden Panettiere. Credit: Michael Buckner/Getty

- Hayden Panettiere is opening up about her life in her new book, *This Is Me: A Reckoning, *including her famous exes.

- Panettiere dated her *Heroes* costar Milo Ventimiglia back when she was 18 and he was 30.

- "At 18, I lived so much life that he almost couldn't count me as being 18," she tells EW.

Hayden Panettiere is looking back at her past relationship with former *Heroes* costar Milo Ventimiglia with a new life experience.

“That's hard. My daughter's 11, so I'm trying to think of how I would feel,” Panettiere, now 36, tells ** in an exclusive interview about her upcoming book, *This Is Me: A Reckoning*, when asked about her nearly 12-year age gap with Ventimiglia.

“I'm sure she's going to do exactly what Mommy did,” the actress continues. “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 and Ventimiglia, now 48, met on the set of NBC’s *Heroes*, playing cheerleader Claire and hospice nurse Peter, respectively, in 2006. The pair dated for nearly two years, starting their romance when she was just 18 and he was 30. They called it quits in 2009.

“But if it was somebody that was inappropriate, if it came off inappropriate or was somebody that my parents were like, ‘No, this is just a creepy situation,’ then they never would've allowed it to happen,” Panettiere adds.

The *Nashville* alum writes about Ventimiglia in her new book, out May 19.

“Every relationship I’ve ever been in, I invested my whole self in,” she told *Us Weekly *when asked about Ventimiglia earlier this month. “I saw him as my partner and that it was going to hopefully keep going and evolving and lead to marriage.”

She noted that the relationship was formative for her.

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“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 positive things about the *Gilmore Girls* alum, their initial breakup was a low point for her. (In the book, she reveals that Ventimiglia ended things but took her back a week later because she was so emotional about the split.)

'This Is Me: A Reckoning' by Hayden Panettiere.

Grand Central Publishing

“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.”

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Not long after their second breakup, Panettiere met Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko, with whom she shares daughter Kaya. The two ended their on-again, off-again relationship in 2018, something else Panettiere explores in the book.

“I've been in this industry for my entire life and there've been a lot of stories and preconceived ideas of who I am since I was about — that really started at 16 years old,” she told EW. “I get to tell people the truth. I get to tell them what really happened, and what really happened is generally more entertaining than anything that anyone could come up with.”

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Source: “EW Exclusive”