Photo: Victoria Sirakova/Getty Images
The story of how Vampire Diaries star Ian Somerhalder found himself $10 million-plus in debt is a little unclear, but the good news is that he has found his way out of it again. He gives most of the credit to his wife, Nikki Reed.
Somerhalder said in an interview with E! News published on Thursday, “I left an insanely lucrative career in television after financial upheaval from building a business that I didn’t build properly.” This apparently involved making personal guarantees to a bank for a clean energy company. He explained that “fraud” put him and his wife in “an eight-figure hole,” which was not easy to climb out of. He and Reed sold, “houses, paintings, cars, watches, everything,” he said, crediting Reed with negotiating them out of the bad deal. And to think, Somerhalder could have been “retiring off of one of the biggest TV shows in the world.”
Since The Vampire Diaries, Somerhalder has been involved in several companies, such as Brothers Bond Bourbon, which he cofounded with fellow TVD star Paul Wesley. More recently, he and Reed cofounded The Absorption Company, a brand of nutritional supplements with “proprietary game-changing technology.” One can only hope that this proves to be a safer investment.
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