‘Vampire Diaries’ actor Ian Somerhalder reveals ‘financial upheaval’ led to his television career exit

LOS ANGELES: Actor Ian Somerhalder, best known for his portrayal of Damon Salvatore in ‘The Vampire Diaries’, confessed to being in an eight-figure debt after taking retirement from acting.

Speaking to E! News, Somerhalder shared that “financial upheaval” was a part of the reason that made him leave a lucrative television career.

“I retired from acting seven years ago. I left an insanely lucrative career in television after financial upheaval from building a business that I didn’t build properly. And due to fraud, it put my wife and I into an eight-figure hole. Eight figures is a hard hole to climb out of. But Nikki (Reed) and I did it. You know, she really negotiated us out of this deal, but we sold houses, paintings, cars, watches, everything”, the actor said, as quoted by Variety.

Somerhalder and Nikki Reed have been married since 2015. In a 2021 Instagram post, the actor once shared how his wife helped him out of a difficult phase.

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“Before Nik and I got together, I built a company while shooting TVD that was important to me. I invested heavily, and I made huge personal guarantees to banks. However, due to greed and fraud within that company and fraudulent activities from our biggest customer, not to mention the temporary collapse of the oil and gas industry, I was left in an EIGHT-FIGURE hole. It was awful. A true nightmare day in and day out. I had to travel the world weekly to pay for massive monthly six-figure bank notes, and ended up in the hospital 4 times in 2 years. This woman here decided that she didn’t want to see her husband ruin his body/mind/spirit and pulled up her bootstraps and got down in the trenches assembling a team to get to the negotiating table to find a way out. She devoted 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”, a part of the post read.

One of the most cherished shows, ‘The Vampire Diaries’, debuted in September 2009, bringing the iconic story from Mystic Falls, Virginia, to the small screen.

Featuring Nina Dobrev, Paul Wesley, and Ian Somerhalder in the lead roles as Elena Gilbert, Stefan Salvatore, and Damon Salvatore, the show followed a love triangle built around the supernatural world of vampires, witches, werewolves and more. (ANI)