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Ian Somerhalder is reflecting on his time starring on two major TV shows. September 2024 marks the 15th anniversary of the premiere of The Vampire Diaries and the 20th anniversary of Lost, which was one of the 45-year-old actor’s first major breakout roles. In a new interview, Ian looked back at his time on the fan-favorite shows and explained why he decided to take a step back from acting. Keep reading to find out more…While speaking to People, Ian called his Lost job a “very humbling experience,” especially since his character experienced one of the first major deaths in season 1. While he returned throughout the series several times for guest appearances, Ian admitted that his initial exit was very hard on him at the time. “Losing that, I was the first one cast and the first one killed, that was a sort of tough pill to swallow,” Ian admitted, adding that his brief time in Hawaii helped inspire his passion for environmental conservation. “I got to work on a lot of reef conservation,” Ian explained. “I got to work on a lot of soil and water conservation even there. This is 2004, I was already doing this, my voice just wasn’t as big. Cut to 2005, [I] left Lost, which was humbling. And then very beginning of 2009 came Vampire Diaries. And that was a rocket ship. Initially, it was a very, very, very young audience, but that audience matured and it got bigger and bigger.” Ian went on to note that “streaming changed the game” for both Lost and The Vampire Diaries and introduced a whole new audience to his work both on and off screen. “[The Vampire Diaries] now has been seen by almost like 1.2 billion people globally/ So if you just run those numbers, you sort of step back for a second and think about that, there’s 8 billion people on the planet, so it’s roughly about one-eighth of the people walking the face of the planet have somehow interfaced with this IP, the story,” Ian said. “They’ve been affected by it, maybe they’ve seen it, heard about it,” he continued. “That’s an unparalleled platform. So if you can chain link some knowledge and passion together for me, animals and soil health regeneration at a very large scale, that’s going to be quite substantial.” Ian then added that he has “enormous gratitude” for the shows as they gave him a platform to speak about projects close to his heart. “That path has gotten me to where I feel most authentic anyway, which is in a pair of cowboy boots, feeding the cows and running horses,” Ian said, who now lives on a farm with wife Nikki Reed and their two kids – 7-year-old daughter Bodhi and a 1-year-old son. While he’s grateful for his past roles, Ian admitted that his main priorities are off screen projects. “August 19th makes five years since I was professionally on camera as an actor/producer,” Ian pointed out. “I stepped away from that after V Wars to build these companies, launch films like Kiss the Ground, Common Ground and Ground Swell and raise my kids. I remember sitting with my management talking about this, saying, ‘Hey, this is the only thing I’ve ever known that’s ever sustained my family, and I’m walking away from it,’ at this sort of peak, could have gone and done anything, but these partnerships mean way more to me.” “I say this in all humility, in all respect, but I would much rather do this than go spend two months in some city, shooting a TV show away from my family or transporting my family back and forth,” Ian explained. “Once you reach a certain level, you’re like, ‘Okay, I want to focus on family and the future of farming and food and energy and the big things.’ I don’t need to chase awards and anything that would make me feel better about myself.” He concluded, “The fact now is I get to partner with people that are launching things like the Greater Ground initiative where they’re literally holding the hands and investing in these groups of people, these farmers that are actually creating this food that our pets and us eat. That’s huge. So you go and you do all these fancy things and you realize at the end of it, it’s the grounding stuff that matters.” In an interview from earlier this year, Nikki, 36, also opened up about stepping away acting and from Hollywood. Find out what Ian‘s Lost co-stars have been up to since the show ended.
