Ian​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ Somerhalder had financial problems after he stopped acting and had to sell his possessions to pay off his ​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌debts.

Ian Somerhalder Discloses He Went Deep Eight-Figure Debt After Stepping Down From Acting

Star of The Vampire Diaries, Ian Somerhalder, spoke about a huge financial problem which happened to him after he decided to quit acting. He shared that he and his wife Nikki Reed had to work hard to overcome a debt which was over $10 million.

During a frank new conversation with E! News held at the Beverage Forum in Manhattan Beach, Somerhalder pointed out that “financial upheaval” resulting from a badly planned business venture, which was also a fraud case, was what made him decide to leave the TV world.

“My retirement from acting is seven years back, ” he recalled. “I gave up an extremely lucrative career in television after financial upheaval from the business that I didn’t manage properly. And due to fraud, my wife and I ended up in an eight-figure hole.”

The actor, who had first made his mark as Boone Carlyle on ABC’s Lost and then gained global recognition as vampire Damon Salvatore in all the eight seasons of The Vampire Diaries, called the financial recovery path an incredibly hard task.

“An eight-figure debt is a very difficult problem to get rid of, ” he confessed. “But Nikki and I, we managed to do it. Actually, she negotiated us out of this kind of situation, but in the end, we sold houses, paintings, cars, watches, everything.”

Ian Somerhalder Opens Up About Climbing Out of Multi-Million Dollar Debt With Wife Nikki Reed’s Help

Looking back at the financial pressure he faced, Somerhalder recognized that he could have walked away with a secure financial future if he had not left one of the biggest TV shows without a plan.

“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 said.

Somerhalder and Twilight actress Nikki Reed have been married since 2015. He has mentioned Reed as the one who saved their finances. “A true nightmare thing that had started happening to me at the time when I was still The Vampire Diaries, and I can’t thank Nikki enough for stepping in and helping us through, ” he said in an Instagram post he shared.

“This woman here not only thought it through that she didn’t want to see her husband ruin his body, mind, and spirit, but also pulled up her bootstraps and got down in the trenches assembling a team to get to the negotiating table to find a way out, ” he said. “She committed her life to getting me out of that mess, and it almost killed her in the process. I am where I am because of this woman.”

Somerhalder says his acting career is “behind him” as he chooses family and farming over Hollywood

After the cancellation of his Netflix series V Wars in 2020, Somerhalder decided to stop acting. Eventually, he communicated to People magazine that going back to Hollywood is not in his plans, calling his acting career a “thing of the past.”

He recalled an open conversation with his management team about leaving his one and only job that most would consider his lifelong peak.

” I remember sitting with my management discussing this issue and saying, ‘Hey, this is the only thing I’ve ever known that’s ever sustained my family, and I’m walking away from it, ‘” he mentioned “I would rather be doing this than going off for two months to some city, filming a TV show away from my family or regularly moving my family back and forth.”

For Somerhalder, the change was reorienting to what really counts. “After a while you get to the point where you think, ‘Well, I’ve got to focus on my family and the future of farming and food and energy and other major things, ‘” he said. “It’s not like I need to keep chasing awards and things that would make me feel good about myself.”