tress Hayden Panettiere says she “had a blast” doing the lesbian kiss with co-star Madeline Zima.Thesun.co.uk reports that Panettiere’s character Claire Bennet gets intimate with roommate Gretchen Berg. She also claims that the lesbian was her idea and that she asked the show’s writers to give her a more risque storyline.

Speaking of her co-star Madeline, Panettiere said: “She’s a great girl and we had a blast.” [Source]

The new season of Heroes finds Claire going to college. In real life, acting commands all of Hayden Panettiere’s young adult attention, but she tells reports that she has not ruled out higher education.

“I do very much believe in education,” Panettiere said. “My thought of college has always been that it’s not only continuing your education, but it’s also a social experience. It’s your first time on your own. It’s your first time not having someone sit there and go, ‘You need to go to bed at this time, you need to do your homework, you need to get up at this time to go to class.’ You’re on your own terms. That social experience, because I’ve been on my own, because I know so clearly, hopefully what I am going to do for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t get that social aspect the same.”

Acting and leading a hit series has taught Panettiere the same lessons, perhaps even better than Universities are doing today. “Most of what I saw from my friends that came back from their freshman year, they’re all hanging from their fingernails, going, ‘I almost just failed out of school. I almost just flunked,’ because there’s they have to juggle these new responsibilities that they didn’t have before and you generally learn the hard way. You learn from mistakes and doing it over and over again.”

Panettiere still has that experience too, when the press documents every little mistake she makes. “Not to mention it is a really big thing that you want to go and you want to have the social experience, and you want go out to the bars like the other kids are going to. Everyone does that, they do, whether you like it or not, and you have to deal with the fear of somebody taking a picture of you with a drink in your hand, a fear of going and getting placed all over the place.”

Hollywood has also afforded her educational opportunities more unique than the traditional four year institutions provide. “I’ve had the opportunity to travel all over the world and see beautiful countries, I’ve talked to incredibly intelligent well educated people, I’ve been involved with politics, I’ve been involved with environmental studies and work and have gotten a great education on the things that I’m curious and passionate about whether it be the ocean. I’m really well educated on the ocean just from spending time with really smart, smart people and this is their field and this is what they know and you learn so much from them. I’m very interested in history and I have a bunch of history books at home and I sit there all day and I watch the history channel for 12 hours straight about Christopher Columbus and the ocean blue, and the layers of the ozone. Science has always been a big thing and I’ve really been educated having not gone to college. Would I have liked to? Yeah, but it didn’t quite pan out that way.” [source]

Don’t go swimming with HAYDEN PANETTIERE if you’re terrified of sharks - the HEROES star is a magnet for the predators.
The actress spends a lot of time in the water, surfing and protesting the killing of dolphins and whales - and she reveals she often finds herself swimming with sharks.
She says, “I tend to attract them everywhere I go… I’d really rather not see a shark while I’m paddling on a board… but, if you want to see a shark, put me in the water.”
And there’s one encounter she’d like to forget - she attracted one shark by peeing in the ocean off Hawaii.
Panettiere was diving with her mother and brother when was caught short and decided to relieve herself while treading water - but the relief was replaced by terror.
Appearing on late-night U.S. TV chat show Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the actress recalls, “This safety diver got in to take pictures of my brother and my mum and they had their fins on and when the shark comes too close, you put your fins in their face, and I didn’t have my fins on and all of a sudden… they start going, ‘Shark, right behind you!’
“I was going, ‘What could it be? Tiger shark, Mako, bull, Great White…’ I swam for my life… They were yelling at us because it’s the worst thing to do is to swim away from the shark and make all the splashing. I was like, ‘Guys, you yelled shark… How else do people react? I practically walked on water back to the boat.’” [Source]

Hayden Panettiere finds it “nerve-wracking” when her fans get too close to home.

The Heroes star says she frequently receives gifts from one girl who is convinced they are best friends — and she’s scared about it.

“I just got a box at my house for my birthday from this girl who writes all the time — just like body lotions and this little box of dog toys in there,” Hayden said. “There’s candles, it’s like this little box that she put together for my birthday.

“But she wrote in it things like ‘I’m so glad to be able to call you friend and I tell you every day what an amazing person you are.’

“Basically saying that she knew me and I have no idea who it is. When it gets that close to home it gets a little nerve-wracking.”

Hayden — whose character in Heroes has the power to heal — recently revealed she’s worried someone might stab her, expecting her to regenerate.

“I’m just afraid somebody’s going to stab me one day and think that my power is real and they expect me to start healing,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about that since the first season, I’m like what if somebody really thought I was indestructible.

“Because I’ve heard some wacky things come out of people’s mouths that you go, ‘Guys, it’s not real’.”