{"id":462209,"date":"2026-04-30T23:03:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T23:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/462209\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T23:03:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T23:03:10","slug":"ian-somerhalder-went-into-debt-after-vampire-diaries-acting-retirement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/462209\/","title":{"rendered":"Ian Somerhalder Went Into Debt After Vampire Diaries, Acting Retirement"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIan Somerhalder<\/a> revealed in a new interview with E! News<\/a> that he was forced to claw himself and his family out of debt in the eight-figure range (an exact number was not given but it was $10 million or more) after he retired from acting. Somerhalder said \u201cfinancial upheaval\u201d is part of the reason he had to leave his lucrative television career behind. He gained prominence as Boone Carlyle on four seasons of ABC\u2019s \u201cLost<\/a>\u201d (two as a series regular and two as a special guest) and then became a sensation for playing the vampire Damon Salvatore on all eight seasons of The CW\u2019s \u201cThe Vampire Diaries<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI retired from acting seven years ago,\u201d Somerhalder recently told E! News\u2019 while attending Manhattan Beach\u2019s Beverage Forum. \u201cI left an insanely lucrative career in television after financial upheaval from building a business that I didn\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI should\u2019ve been retiring off of one of the biggest TV shows in the world [instead of] starting companies that were not gonna pay me possibly ever,\u201d the actor added.<\/p>\n

\n\tSomerhalder has been married to \u201cTwilight\u201d actor Nikki Reed since 2015. He previously posted on Instagram<\/a>\u00a0that Reed helped get him out of a \u201ctrue nightmare\u201d as he was building a company while still starring on \u201cThe Vampire Diaries.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis woman here decided that she didn\u2019t 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,\u201d he wrote on at the time. \u201cShe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSomerhalder retired from acting after his Netflix series \u201cV Wars\u201d was canceled in 2020. He later told People magazine<\/a> that acting again would be unlikely as his Hollywood career is \u201cin the rearview mirror.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI remember sitting with my management talking about this, saying, \u2018Hey, this is the only thing I\u2019ve ever known that\u2019s ever sustained my family, and I\u2019m walking away from it,\u2019 at this sort of peak,\u201d Somerhalder remembered about his decision to stop acting. \u201cI say this in all humility, in all respect, but I would much rather do this than go spend two months in some city, shooting a TV show away from my family or transporting my family back and forth. Once you reach a certain level, you\u2019re like, \u2018Okay, I want to focus on family and the future of farming and food and energy and the big things.\u2019 I don\u2019t need to chase awards and anything that would make me feel better about myself.\u201d<\/p>\n