Ian Somerhalders Bold Exit from Hollywood Explained

It's been seven years sinceretired from acting and moved out of Hollywood to live on a sustainable farm in the countryside near Santa Barbara, .

And the 47-year-old Vampire Diaries alum has revealed the final straw that made him leave the profession was the way he was treated while trying to salvage his 'unwatchable' sci-fi series, V Wars.

'[I] 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 Haley on the Go last week.

The Actor Award winner was excited about portraying Dr. Luther Swann, a scientist trying to stop a pandemic transforming people into vampires, in the 10-episode adaptation of the Jonathan Maberry comic books.

'I said to the studio, I don't want to put my name on this. I'll give you the money back. I'll give you millions of dollars,' Somerhalder recalled.

'And they were like, "What? What are you talking about?"'

The Louisiana-born businessman was granted 'creative control of the show' but had to raise his own $6 million budget to film six days of reshoots.

'I ended up in the hospital [from exhaustion]. Literally, the full body just shut down,' Somerhalder said.

Netflix still decided to 'quietly cancel' V Wars in March 2020 - ironically at the dawn of the real-life COVID-19 pandemic.