'Vampire Diaries’ star Ian Somerhalder admits to getting into eight-figure debt after retiring
Ian Somerhalder admitted to getting into a large sum of debt after leaving show business.
In an E! News interview, the former actor revealed that he and his family had to work their out of an eight-figure debt after retiring from acting.
“I retired from acting seven years ago,” Somerhalder told the outlet while in the Manhattan Beach’s Beverage Forum. “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."
He added that his wife, Nikki Reed, was the main player to getting him out of the debt after selling most of their property,
"Eight figures is a hard hole to climb out of. But Nikki and I did it. You know, she really negotiated us out of this deal but we sold houses, paintings, cars, watches, everything.”
The actor then expressed regret for making a bad career move as he built a company that eventually crumbled while still shooting The Vampire Diaries.
“I should’ve 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," he conclduded.
Somerhalder is known for playing Boone Carlyle ABC’s Lost on four seasons. and then became a sensation for playing the vampire Damon Salvatore in The CW’s The Vampire Diaries for all of its eight seasons.
Somerhalder married Twilight actress Nikki Reed in 2015. They have two children together.
