Ian Somerhalder, wife Nikki Reed get new life perspective after moving to farm

Ian Somerhalder and his wife Nikki Reed made the decision to leave the city behind and relocate to a farm, to acquired a fresh perspective.

The Vampire Diaries star spoke with People on Wednesday during Shiseido's annual beach clean-up for their Blue Project in Huntington Beach, California, about how accepting a peaceful life enabled him to further adopt the couple's sustainability initiatives.

"[It's been] magic," said the actor, about moving to a farm outside of Los Angeles with Reed and their daughter, Bodhi Soleil, 5. 

"It's really the way it's always supposed to have been. I think now you're seeing a lot of people who were working in corporate offices, and you can see it now from a societal standpoint. People are having a really hard time getting back to work."

He added, "People have realized that their time and the value of their time and the value proposition of time has shifted a bit. Be more engaged, be outdoors more, spend more time with one another."

Somerhalder also discussed what he has learned over the past few years despite his claim that he doesn't "plan on being on screen for a long time."

"I think what the pandemic sort of did was show us that moments matter. Birthdays matter. Holidays matter. These small little granular moments with one another really matter," he told the magazine. 

"And that is why Nikki and I find that rural or even urban/rural lifestyle — which I think a lot of people are getting into, whether it's permaculture, building food forests — we're past the point of just thinking that we're going to stop all this by not using plastic straws and driving electric cars," he mentioned.