Hayden Panettiere Shares Rare Details of Stephen Colletti Romance and Split
Hayden Panettiere is pulling back the curtain on her brief romance with Laguna Beach's Stephen Colletti nearly 20 years after they called it quits.
"I'm so grateful that he was part of my life, especially when he was," Panettiere, 36, exclusively reveals in her Us Weekly cover story on newsstands now. "Because when I was with him was when I started having to deal with paparazzi and tabloids and being the focal point of them."
Panettiere explains that because of Colletti's time on MTV's Laguna Beach - which he starred on from 2004 to 2005 - that type of attention was "something he had dealt with before."
"[He] was able to help guide me through that experience and getting used to that," Panettiere recalls, revealing that Colletti, 40, was "very protective of me."
The Nashville alum notes that Colletti handled the press "very diplomatically."
"He never appeared to be [or] came off as a bad guy," Panettiere tells Us of the former reality star. "So I knew that there was a way to protect yourself and put up boundaries without being offensive or rude."
Panettiere and Colletti dated for nearly two years after being linked in 2006, and according to the actress, their breakup wasn't scandalous or contentious. (They parted ways by the end of 2007.)
"We just ended up going our separate ways, there wasn't really a story there," she says. "Like, no drama."
The Heroes alum reveals that she "ran into him for the first time in ages" recently and it was a pleasant surprise.
"I think he's about to become a dad and I'm so happy for him," Panettiere adds. "We don't keep in touch the way that I wish we did, because he's such a great guy, but there was no drama."
She reiterates, "There was really no story" surrounding their split. "It was so peaceful and kind," Panettiere tells Us with a laugh.
Panettiere has had several high-profile relationships since her Hollywood start, which began in the early ‘90s as a child star.
Colletti was one of her first public romances - but his love life was already headline-making news after he dated his high school sweetheart Kristin Cavallarion Laguna Beach and flirted with longtime pal Lauren "LC" Conrad on the show in the early 2000s.
After Laguna Beach, Colletti went on to star on One Tree Hill and later cocreated Everyone Is Doing Great, on which he also stars. He married Alex Weaver in 2025 and they are expecting their first baby together.
Panettiere, meanwhile, went on to date Heroes costar Milo Ventimiglia, who is 12 years her senior, from 2007 to 2009.
The actress dated boxer Wladimir Klitschko on and off from 2009 to 2013 before getting engaged that year. The pair welcomed their daughter, Kaya, in December 2014. Panettiere and Klitschko, 50, split for good in August 2018.
Panettiere moved on with Brian Hickerson in 2018, but they split in 2020 after he went to jail for a domestic violence dispute. (Hickerson was charged in 2020 with four domestic assault felonies, one misdemeanor account of battery, two felony accounts of assault with a deadly weapon, and one felony count of dissuading a witness, Panettiere, from prosecuting a crime. He was sentenced to 45 days in jail after pleading no contest to two felony counts of injuring a spouse or girlfriend.)
Panettiere has since come out as bisexual, detailing her journey in her new memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, which hits shelves on Tuesday, May 19.
For more information on Panettiere's love life and past romances, pick up the latest issue of Us Weekly, on newsstands now.
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This story was originally published May 7, 2026 at 2:54 PM.