'Vampire Diaries' Star Ian Somerhalder Is 'Humbled' By Fan Support

'Vampire Diaries' Star Ian Somerhalder Is 'Humbled' By Fan Support



Alrighty Ian Somerhalder fans, although we've already shared teasers for upcoming episodes, Ian's thoughts on going musical and Katherine's reign of terror, we've saved a few of the juiciest bits of our interview with your favorite "The Vampire Diaries" star for today. This one is all about you: the fans.

During our conversation, we mentioned to Ian that typing his name into YouTube results in over 5,000 videos—most of them fan-made—and we wondered what he thought about his popularity.

"These fans, I owe them so much," Ian said. "Not to sound cliché, we wouldn’t have this show [without them]. They are so unbelievably supportive of me and my work and my passions. It's a very strange relationship; it's like having this crazy support team, it's almost how a family supports each other, it's really bizarre and it's really really cool," he explained.

"I don’t take it for granted, I appreciate it in every way shape and form. They're great, and they're pretty damn inspiring," he said. "They get together on their own and they make all sorts of things happen. This one group of teenagers in high school raised this really significant amount of money for the National Wildlife Federation just on a whim, because they thought that was the right thing to do. People kept asking where to send money, the NRDC which is the Natural Resources Defense Council, those people are amazing; there’s Conservation International, and then there's the Wildlife Federation that is actually helping all these animals survive and these kids raised like a lot of money and they sent it to the National Wildlife Foundation… I didn’t even ask them… These are kids in high school who could have otherwise been buying some Justin Bieber albums, and they put their allowance and whatever money they make babysitting and they pooled it all together and…you know how many animals they’ll help. It's humbling, put it that way."

So there you have it, a giant "I heart you" from your Mr. Somerhalder.