Ian Somerhalder has spoken openly about the financial crisis that forced him to abandon one of television’s most lucrative careers and sell houses, paintings, cars and watches to recover.
He vampire diaries star said MY! News That fraud and a poorly built business left him and his wife Nikki Reed in an eight-figure hole, meaning debt totaled at least $10 million.
“I left an incredibly lucrative career in television after a financial crisis to build a business that I didn’t build properly. And because of the fraud, it put my wife and I in an eight-figure hole. Eight figures is a tough hole to get out of. But Nikki and I made it through. You know, she actually negotiated with us to get out of this deal, but we sold houses, paintings, cars, watches, everything.”
He was candid about the painful irony of the situation.
“I should have retired from one of the biggest television shows in the world. [instead of] start companies that would possibly never pay me,” he said.
Somerhalder retired from acting seven years ago, after his Netflix series V Wars It was canceled in 2020.
Before that, he had spent years as one of the most recognizable faces on television, first as Boone Carlyle on Lostthen as the vampire Damon Salvatore in the eight seasons of the vampire diaries in The C.W..
He previously credited Reed, whom he married in 2015, for saving him from what he called a “real nightmare.”
In an Instagram post at the time, she wrote that she had “dedicated her life to getting me out of that mess and it almost killed her along the way. I am where I am BECAUSE of this woman.”
Looking back on the decision to leave acting, Somerhalder had no regrets.
“I remember sitting with my management talking about this, saying, ‘Hey, this is the only thing I’ve ever known that has sustained my family, and I’m moving away from that,’ at this kind of peak. I’d rather do this than spend two months in some city, filming a TV show away from my family. Once you reach a certain level, you say, ‘Okay, I want to focus on family and the future of agriculture and food and energy and big things.’ I don’t need to chase awards or anything that makes me feel better about myself.”
