A look at Vampire Diaries' Ian Somerhalder

Having grown up in a small town in Louisiana, Ian Somerhalder probably feels right at home filming Vampire Diaries in Georgia. While he began a career in modeling at 10, by his late teens he'd decided that acting was his true passion. His reasoning is pretty profound. "To explore different parts of yourself and different emotional lives....not to hide from who you are but to actually explore who you are".

The character of Damon certainly seems like a chance to explore darker parts of himself. While they are both vampires, Damon is in many ways the polar opposite of his brother Stefan, played by Paul Wesley. While Damon maintains a traditional vampire diet, Stefan has decided to go the "vegetarian" route and only feed on animals. Because of that, Damon has much stronger powers than Stefan. Stefan's love for Elena drives him to keep her safe while Damon's attraction to her is quite literally blood lust. And thus the scene is set.

Last week's episode, Night of the Comet, began to show more of the darkness of Damon. Before the Vampire Diaries, Ian was probably best known for his portrayal of Boone Carlyle, the most unfortunate survivor on Lost. The role of Damon is one that could change that. There are so many directions for this character to go and even a second stage of the books centered around him. There appear to be very few limits for Ian right now.

Early viewer response to Ian’s portrayal of Damon may be surprising to some. He’s definitely establishing a fan base that could lead to cries of Team Stefan and Team Damon. That’s part of the character’s charm. He is definitely the bad boy, but with enough redeeming qualities to make him very hard to write off. In a recent interview, Ian was asked what has surprised him about playing Damon.

A series evolves, and you get to evolve with these characters. Going from the pilot into the episodes and seeing the different interactions between characters has surprised me greatly, because I start to ingratiate myself into the town and try to weasel my way into Stefan’s world, which I start to do with varying amounts of success. That surprises me, which has been a lot of fun. It’s been a lot of fun to be in the room with a bunch of other people because it could have been that my relationship with Stefan and or Elena was all you saw. But that’s not the case because Damon has an agenda. He does. And that’s what’s so cool about him.

Fans of the series, whether they have read the books or not, are very likely to be just as surprised while watching the story unfold. A new episode airs tonight at 8/7c on CW.

Vampire Diaries airs Thursdays at 8/7c on CW, Watch full episodes and previews on CW.com