The Pretty Face

A former scrawny pretty face walks into a typical television audition with a now well built rough façade. He is neither confident nor nervous but hopes, like any actor, that this will lead to a respectable paying job. However, his strong façade soon changes into a naïve cower when he goes through something every credible actor experiences more than once in their career: he blows the audition. Guess those expressive gypsy eyes don’t work on just anyone, but that was a moment where Ian Somerhalder realized he couldn’t only rely on those alluring eyes, or even being well built, to be an actor. So began a journey of unveiling for Somerhalder with finding his most significant method of entertaining that makes him unique: his immense conscience and greatly limited ego.

At the age of 10 Somerhalder began a modeling career and traveled from his hometown of Covington, Louisiana, all over the fashion world and modeled for various designer labels including Calvin Klein, Gucci and Versace. He loved traveling but by his late teens Somerhalder had seen more of the planet than most ever do in a lifetime. He decided, unlike many models that have gotten the acting buzz, to study the art of drama in New York. Somerhalder started out slow in his career with a few movie rolls and off Broadway plays, until getting cast as Boone on the popular TV show Lost. Thinking he had hit the big time Somerhalder planned on going even further with this new found luck, but instead experienced another common disappointment as an actor and at the very end of the first season his character was killed off the show.

After that scar began to heal, Somerhalder went through various auditions, including his complete bomb for the acclaimed television show True Blood. He finally hit the jackpot in late 2008 and was cast as Damon Salvatore on the new bloodsucking primetime hit The Vampire Diaries. He may not be titled as the leading man, but Somerhalder has created his character as a personality that the show desperately needs in order to have a creative and captivating storyline week by week. He has brought to life a character that the audience can completely hate but still feel vast sympathy for as someone who can’t fight his menacing dark side.

Although Somerhalder has generated enough experience in his acting career to allow him to create original characters (even out of a genre that is completely far from original), he is an actor that has learned much more from his mistakes than anything else. His ego always stays at a low level from those harsh failures and at the same time Somerhalder knows that he is very lucky to be where he is as an actor. He never takes anything for granted, especially his fans, and knows to take the good moments as they come because they won’t last long. Hopefully, though, those moments will last longer this time for Somerhalder, his character is undead after all and that’s got to count to something for keeping a working man a job.