Hayden Panettiere With Why I Broke Up With Stephen Colletti

“I just knew I wanted to breathe,” Panettiere, 18, says in the April issue of Seventeen. “I wanted to be single at the time.

“It just hit me like a ton of bricks: This is the time I need to be with myself. It takes such a secure person to be with someone like me—it takes so much confidence; it takes so much trust.”

Panettiere found a way to spend her time alone: campaigning for whales.

A warrant was out for her arrest in Japan after she interfered in a dolphin hunt last year.

“There’s very little that scares me,” she tells Seventeen. “I’ve always been a physical person. And I feel like a lot of time in this industry, a lot of people loan their face to a cause, which is great, but it doesn’t do as much as getting out there and actually physically doing something.”

Panettiere doesn’t apologize for being so outspoken.

“I don’t need to prove myself to anyone,” she says. “I’m not that kind of person.

“I know myself much better now than I did [before],” she goes on. “And my opinions of things and my morals – I am not as easily swayed as I used to be.

“And when you learn to accept yourself, the more you learn to be okay with yourself and know yourself, the easier it is to love somebody and allow them to love you.”

Panettiere is currently dating her Heroes co-star Milo Ventimiglia.

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