Ian Somerhalder says he was in eight-figure debt after retiring from acting

Perhaps unsurprisingly, to those, well, not reading (we know how wealthy our readers are) but writing this article, “eight figures is a hard hole to climb out of.” To do so, Somerhalder continues, he and his wife “sold houses, paintings, cars, watches, everything,” and now considers being the star of a hit TV show like “eating a cupcake” compared to being an entrepreneur. Ultimately, he believes he “should have been retiring off of one of the biggest TV shows in the world,” not “starting companies that were not gonna pay me possibly ever.” 

Somerhalder left acting after finally staking his hit show, The Vampire Diaries, in 2017. Since then, he’s taken up a host of environmental causes, produced a few documentaries, and launched Brothers’ Bond Bourbon with his former diarist and vampiric bro, Paul Wesley. But if he or anyone else wants to start a business with their significant others, please, “Make it fun,” he says. “Remember, it’s supposed to be fun.”