Ian Somerhalder opened up about the financial turmoil that nearly derailed his life, and how his wife Nikki Reed helped him climb out of an eight-figure hole.
Speaking at the Beverage Forum in Manhattan Beach on April 28, the Vampire Diaries alum explained to E! News that he retired from acting seven years ago after a failed clean energy business left him and Reed facing crushing debt.
“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 said.
Somerhalder admitted the ordeal was “a hard hole to climb out of,” but credited Reed for negotiating their way out.
“…we sold houses, paintings, cars, watches, everything,” he recalled.
The couple, who share two children, Bodhi, 8, and a 2-year-old son, endured years of stress as they battled fraud within the company and the collapse of the oil and gas industry.
Looking back, the famed Damon said he “should have been retiring off of one of the biggest TV shows in the world” instead of launching ventures that never paid off.
He has previously praised the Twilight star for her unwavering support, writing in a past Instagram post that she “pulled up her bootstraps and got down in the trenches” to save him from ruin.
The couple, who tied the knot in April 2015, recently celebrated their 11-year wedding anniversary, a milestone made even more meaningful by the challenges they overcame together.
