"The Vampire Diaries" star Ian Somerhalder was in "eight-figure" debt after retiring from acting: "We sold houses, paintings, cars, watches, everything." “I retired from acting seven years ago. 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. Eight figures is a hard hole to climb out of. But Nikki [Reed] and I did it. You know, she really negotiated us out of this deal but we sold houses, paintings, cars, watches, everything. 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.” (via E! News) variety.com/2026/tv/news/i…
