Ian Somerhalder has detailed how he clawed his way out of a mind-blowing “eight-figure” debt while also retiring from acting.
The Vampire Diaries star, 47, and his Twilight star wife Nikki Reed, 37, found themselves in financial strife after a bad business deal, which forced them to sell “everything”.
“I left an insanely lucrative career in television after financial upheaval from building a business that I didn’t build properly,” Somerhalder told E! News at the Beverage Forum on April 28.
“And due to fraud, it put my wife and I into an eight-figure hole,” he said, explaining “it all came crashing down” after personal guarantees to a bank for an unnamed company.
Unsurprisingly, the former actor said “eight figures is a hard hole to climb out of” but credited his wife with negotiating them out of it.
To do it, he and Reed ”sold houses, paintings, cars, watches – everything.”
While Somerhalder “should have been retiring off of one of the biggest TV shows in the world”, the huge money setback did not put him off further business.
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He walked away from his acting career in 2019 and now runs a number of companies, including a bourbon brand with his former Vampire Diaries co-star Paul Wesley.
It’s safe to say he has bounced back from the mountain of debt, labelling both his current ventures as “nine-figure businesses”.
Somerhalder has starred in shows like Lost and Smallville, however he is best known as Damon, one of the leads in the hit vampire series throughout its eight-season run.
He later played a main role in science fiction horror series V Days but left acting to focus on his other passions when it was cancelled after one season.
“Once you reach a certain level, you’re like, ‘OK, I want to focus on family and the future of farming and food and energy and the big things.’ I don’t need to chase awards and anything that would make me feel better about myself,” he told People in 2024.
That same year, he said acting was very much “in the rear-view mirror” for him and Reed, who also runs a jewellery line.
”We’re building three companies at the same time, raising kids,” he said.
The couple, who have been together 12 years, are parents to daughter Bodhi, eight, and a two-year-old son.
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