Ian Somerhalder has told how he and Nikki Reed were left with an "eight-figure" debt following bad business decisions.

The Vampire Diaries actor has praised his wife for helping them return to financial stability after "it all came crashing down" due to "fraud", explaining things went wrong when he made huge personal guarantees to a bank for an unnamed clean energy company.

He told E! News: "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 and I did it. You know, she really negotiated us out of this deal but we sold houses, paintings, cars, watches, everything."

The 47-year-old former actor - who has daughter Bodhi, eight, and a two-year-old son with Nikki - is now happy with his multiple business ventures but noted at the time he "should have 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."

The Lost actor is also looking ahead to other ventures.

He said: "I've just started learning how to be a pilot. You plan as much for when things don't go right as then they do."

Ian urged anyone wanting to start a business to enjoy themselves.

He suggested: "Make it fun. Remember, it's supposed to be fun.

""Find the beauty in all of it."

This isn't the first time Ian has praised Nikki for her efforts in helping them get out of a "true nightmare".

Back in 2021, he told how he had been building an "important" company while working on The Vampire Diaries at the time things went wrong.

He added on Instagram: "This woman here decided that she didn't want to see her husband ruin his body/mind/spirit and pulled up her bootstraps and got down in the trenches assembling a team to get to the negotiating table to find a way out.

"She devoted her life to getting me out of that mess and it almost killed her along the way.

"I am where I am BECAUSE of this woman."