Ian Somerhalder He revealed that he and his wife Nikki Reed they sunk their teeth into crippling debt and found a way to pay themselves back – but not without putting in some hard work.
“I retired from acting seven years ago,” he said Vampire Diaries alum, 47, told E! News at the Beverage Forum in Manhattan Beach, California, on Tuesday, April 28. “I left an incredibly rewarding career in television after the financial turmoil to build a business that I didn’t attract properly.
Somerhalder admitted that debt was a “hard hole to climb out of,” going on to reveal that Reed’s help was essential to getting back on track.
“But Nikki and I did it,” he added. “You know, we really negotiated this deal but we sold houses, paintings, cars, watches, everything.”
Before you engage with It’s dusk actress, 37, Somerhalder built a clean energy company while playing as Damon on The Vampire Diariesrevealing in May 2021 that it was a business in which he invested “heavily” while making “large personal guarantees to banks.” (The Vampire Diaries (it ran for eight seasons from 2009 to 2017.)
Nikki Reed and Ian Somerhalder
Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images for the Environmental Media AssociationSomerhalder — who is now father to 8-year-old daughter Bodhi and 2-year-old son Reed — said things fell apart “because of the greed and fraud at that company and the fraudulent actions of our biggest customer.”
He cited the temporary collapse of the oil and gas industry at the time as the last straw that broke hs economy. The former small screen actor said in a new interview that “everything went downhill” after he made promises to lenders he couldn’t keep.
In retrospect, Somerhalder said he “should have quit one of the biggest TV shows in the world” instead of “starting companies that wouldn’t pay me.”
2009’s original Vampire Diaries introduced fans to one of the most memorable vampire-themed series to date. The CW show, which ran for eight seasons until 2017, takes place in the fictional town of Mystic Falls, Virginia, which is home to mythical creatures and humans alike. In addition to the legends of people who become vampires, or find out […]
Somerhalder previously thanked Reed for his unwavering support.
“This woman here decided she didn’t want to see her husband ruining her body/mind/spirit so she pulled on her boot straps and entered the trenches to bring the group together to get to the negotiating table to find a way out,” she wrote on Instagram. “He gave his life to get me out of that mess and it almost killed him along the way.”
The couple recently celebrated their 11th wedding anniversary. They tied the knot on April 26, 2015.
