Ian Somerhalder blames Netflix for ending his acting career

Ian Somerhalder has revealed the true reason he quit acting.

Somerhalder departed Hollywood in August 2019 and has since turned his focus to other business ventures with his wife, Nikki Reed.

The Vampire Diaries star shared the "really honest, kind of controversial" reason that he decided to pull the plug on his former career on the latest episode of the Haley on the Go podcast.

He recalled how the cancellation of his Netflix series, V Wars, affected him.

"I wanted to do V Wars because it was me, not as a vampire, it was me as a scientist," he mused about the series.

"We shot the show, moved my whole family to Northern Ontario. Worked really hard on this thing for almost a year, and the show that got turned in wasn't even watchable.

Somerhalder told Netflix that he and his producing partner, James Gibb, needed "creative control of the show" to fix it. The pair then raised more than $6 million (£4.5 million) to do so, filming "10 or 12 hours of footage in about six days".

When the show premiered in December 2019, it was a hit, Somerhalder said, but it was cancelled anyway.

"The powers that be at Netflix were like, 'It's unfortunate. Yes, it shouldn't have happened. We can't go back, because it would set a precedent that would be terrible, so the show is done.'

"So I pulled the plug. That was it. I walked away," Somerhalder concluded. "These executives are b**ching at each other, and I'm like, are you kidding me? Done. I'm out."