FRESH BLOOD
Nina Dobrev’s vampire days may soon be over, but she’s finding plenty of other things to sink her teeth into.
Suspended in midair, Nina Dobrev arches into a backbend. Eyes serenely closed, she wills her arms and legs to go limp while she extends her torso toward the ceiling. Supported by a complex configuration of nylon ropes, this is Dobrev’s third ascent of the day at the rock-climbing wall at Chelsea Piers in New York City. She scaled the first two with natural precision, stepping vertically from rock to rock as if she were stone-skipping across a stream. “Can you get a photo?” she shouts from above, her face reddening with blood. Click. “OK, I’m ready,” she says, wriggling back upright. Our instructor, a wiry, amicable dude in cargo shorts named Chris, gives the ropes some slack as she hoists herself upward, a little more encumbered now. Chris nods his head in admiration and approval. He may have mistaken her for my guru or trainer, but it’s likely he didn’t ID her as a celebrity. Then again, Chris is not exactly the target demo of The Vampire Diaries, the hit CW series to which Dobrev owes her fame. She slaps the wall’s final hold and rappels gracefully toward the ground. Upon a silent landing, she gives me a thumbs-up then comically falls to the foamy floor, legs and arms splayed in a snow-angel position, and smiles. “Your turn,” she says.
“You’ve never done this before?” she asked an hour earlier while we signed away our rights to sue if we were to, you know, perish. “I love that.” After hanging off of supports no larger than a bagel while my arms, legs, and internal organs quake and Dobrev cheers from far, far below, we rub the chalk from our hands, step out of our harnesses, and make our way to the exit. “Are you getting blisters yet?” she asks gleefully, brandishing her palms. As we weave through a weight room, a group of musclemen pause mid-rep and swivel their heads in her direction, but they fail to register. “Whether it’s rock climbing or sports or acting or studying for something, I get very competitive,” explains Dobrev. “Success is the only option—well, the highest level of success is the only option. I’m kind of extremist in that way.”
A reward is in order: pedicures. Dobrev bounds out of Chelsea Piers and flags a taxi. Still wearing black leggings, a stretchy gray jacket, and running shoes, the only thing distinguishing her from the thousands of other really, really pretty girls wearing workout clothes on a Saturday afternoon in New York is her preternaturally long eyelashes and very pampered-looking skin. Dobrev wriggles inside the cab, and we barrel down the West Side Highway.
Upon exiting on West Broadway in Tribeca, she fails to find her bearings. “I’m not that familiar with New York neighborhoods,” she says. The nail salon needs a few minutes, so we pop in the nearby Steven Alan flagship, where Dobrev ponders a jewelry case. She enlists the help of a salesperson in trying on a delicate rose gold bar necklace inset with glitter-sized diamonds. “Is it too expensive?” she wonders, but she won’t be taking it off. The salesperson snips off the tag, and after a cursory lap around the store, Dobrev heads to the register and offers her credit card. “I don’t have much time to shop,” she admits. “When I see something I love, I get it.”
On October 2, the sixth and maybe-final season of The Vampire Diaries will premiere, and while Dobrev, 25, is among the most-chronicled young actresses in Hollywood, she only sees Los Angeles a few times a year. A proud homeowner in Atlanta, Georgia, where the show films, Dobrev lives not unlike a middle-aged office drone: waking early, going in, doing her thing, going home—with a few exceptions, like late-night yoga in her private studio, occasionally taught by a yogi named Jason whom she describes as “Adonis.” Or her penchant for adventure sports like laser tag and Whirlyball. “It’s basically bumper cars with lacrosse sticks,” she explains, enthusiastically. Or her sports car, the first one she’s ever bought brand-new. “I thought, ‘I’m going to get my young-girl car, because the next one’s probably going to be an SUV,’” she says apologetically, as if acutely aware of its mom/kids/suburbs connotations.
But Dobrev’s day job on The Vampire Diaries keeps her firmly tethered to teenaged life. And, of course, the supernatural. Over the run of the show’s first five seasons, her character, Elena Gilbert, has evolved from a small-town orphan to a 19th-century ex-vampire and, sort of, back again. “She learned how to access the evil in herself—the evil that resides in everyone,” says Ian Somerhalder, who co-stars as vampire Damon Salvatore. “She always wants to do her own stunts. Sometimes they let her; sometimes they don’t.” Dobrev has also emerged as a leader among the cast and crew. “Nina likes to rally everyone and create a great family environment in Atlanta,” says Paul Wesley,
who plays vampire Stefan Salvatore. “Which
is key, because I’d probably be a hermit in
my apartment otherwise.”
Due—or thanks—to the show’s success, Dobrev’s personal anonymity has been compromised. “I really do forget,” she says of being famous. “I was at a play last week, Of Mice and Men with James Franco—it was really good—and somebody tapped me on the shoulder and kind of scared me. I was like, ‘Do I know you?’ and then they’re like, ‘You’re Elena.’ I was like, ‘Fuck! That’s right, that’s right.’ People feel like they know you when you’re in their living room, weekly, for five years. But I always get uncomfortable when people know more about me than I know about them. Part of the fun is getting to know someone, discovering each other. When that’s gone, it is very strange.”
As a young actress whose success has been predicated on a single series, Dobrev has something, maybe several things, to prove. So as she’s pondered her life post-Diaries, she’s resolved to make some big moves. “I’ve done so much that I was like, ‘What’s the point? What am I trying to get out of this?’” she says, settling into a plush, chintz-covered armchair at the nail spa and handing her pedicurist a bottle of neutral gold polish. “Everyone thinks that when you achieve certain things, you’ll be happy. But I feel like, ‘OK. I did it. Now what?’” She dips her toes into a ceramic basin filled with warm water, essential oils, and thinly sliced cucumber. “This was my year of not giving myself the option to say ‘no’—saying ‘yes’ to everything,” she continues. “Not limiting myself. Sometimes, you stop yourself mentally before you even have the opportunity to try something.”
So in the past year, the “yes” year, Dobrev signed on for an exhausting amount of recreational travel, bopping around Hawaii, Thailand, Mexico, Japan, and Australia. Her companion: her best friend Ashley, a professional masseuse—“who still has never to this day given me a massage,” clarifies Dobrev with a laugh. “So that’s not why we’re friends. She’s actually a rad chick. She’s up for anything all the time, and she’s one of the happiest people I know. Because she makes her own schedule, I can call her and be like, ‘You’re taking the next three weeks off.’” Tickets are procured with Dobrev’s frequent flier miles.
But during her personal year of “yes,” she’s pondered a professional year of “no”: When it comes to making big career moves, Dobrev says, she treads much more carefully. “Someone recently told me about the power of saying ‘no’ when it comes to work and career things,” she says. “You really have to be smart about not overextending yourself. I have a problem with that. But then I put too much on my plate and I’m not doing whatever I’m doing well.”
But she was wooed by Luke Greenfield’s action comedy Let’s Be Cops, which stars Damon Wayans Jr. and Jake Johnson as friends who get mixed up with mobsters after impersonating policemen. “I’m the girl,” explains Dobrev, who is the love interest of Wayans Jr. Her take on comedy? “It’s terrifying. I can get to an emotional place and start crying, but there’s pressure when you think you have to be funny,” she says. “There’s no form or method. You really have to be uninhibited and fearless.”
Dobrev did an hours-long trip to L.A. for the first chemistry read, and Wayans was an instant admirer. “She showed up, she showed off, and she left,” he says. “She’s a hustler.” The movie filmed in Atlanta, and Dobrev provided her out-of-town colleagues with a comprehensive list of her favorite local restaurants and sights. “She was like a tour guide—a really cool one,” says Wayans. But he was most taken with her talent. “She really knows how to play a scene—she can balance the comedy with the fact that we have a romantic through-line,” he says. “And she’s down to do anything for a laugh.”
Ilaria Urbinati, Dobrev’s longtime stylist and close friend, echoes the sentiment. “She’s single-handedly the most in-the-moment, spontaneous, adventurous person I know,” she says. “Her innate need to live life to the fullest affects everything she does, and it’s really contagious. She’s so open and inclusive, and she always makes you feel welcome. It’s really a rare thing.”
A thick layer of polish is now coating Dobrev’s toes. “When I’m hungry, I get really moody,” she warns. “You don’t want to hang out with me. I have food in my purse at all times. I’m hypoglycemic, maybe. Self-diagnosed, mind you.” I propose dinner, and after wedging dry toes into sneakers, we hobble a few blocks downtown to the posh and spare Sushi of Gari, where Dobrev immediately orders two bowls of miso soup. The sweat has long since dried from our spandex, and Dobrev doesn’t seem to notice that we are criminally underdressed. Drinks, anyone? She proposes sake.
At this point, I’m wondering where the gussied-up girl whose every evening gown makes a best-dressed list is hiding. “It doesn’t feel real,” she says of her red carpet persona. “Because I don’t live in that world. When I go to those events, I’m in town specifically for that, and then I leave later that night. I’ve maybe stayed for the after-party once, ever. It still feels like I’m a fan, in a way. A lot of people are very cynical and very jaded, but I’m not there yet.”
According to Urbinati, “there isn’t anything she can’t pull off. She works a red carpet like nothing I’ve ever seen. She holds herself with a lot of confidence—she’s very self-assured for being so young. And she’s having fun! That makes all the difference.” And while Dobrev will gamely work a floor-grazing custom Donna Karan gown at the Emmys, which she was sewn into, or a paint-splattered J.Mendel pantsuit at the Teen Choice Awards, she still communicates something of a Cinderella vibe, like a young girl just trying all of this on for size.
“I was not a girly-girl growing up,” confirms Dobrev, who was born in Bulgaria but moved to Toronto when she was two. “I had dance class and theater every single day in school, so I always had to wear something comfortable. I liked fashion, but I wasn’t very fashion-savvy. I didn’t always have all the best outfits. In fact, I remember looking in my closet and being like, ‘One day, I want everything to be new.’ For a while there, we actually shopped at The Salvation Army.” It’s safe to say that ended when she was cast as teen mom Mia Jones in the Canadian drama franchise Degrassi: The Next Generation, known for launching stars like Shenae Grimes and Drake. After high school, Dobrev studied sociology at Ryerson University, but she withdrew in 2008 and moved to Los Angeles in pursuit of Hollywood. She landed The Vampire Diaries almost immediately, and by late 2009 was well on her way to becoming a household name after the pilot drew nearly five million viewers.
The tabloids took notice when she began dating Somerhalder, her co-star whose teen-idol looks belie his real age (35). Their relationship lasted from 2011 to 2013, but by official accounts, the breakup was amicable, and the Vampire Diaries set remains low on drama. “I just have a different approach to life and to relationships,” says Dobrev, taking a bite of sashimi. “I don’t like any kind of negativity. I try to be good to everyone, whether it’s a love, a friend, an ex…I’ll always try to treat people the way I want to be treated.” Case in point: “She always lets me have the last fry,” says Somerhalder.
As Dobrev finishes her thimble-sized mug of sake, she ponders what life will look like when she is divorced from the role that made her famous. “I always try to live in the now, but you’re always planning ahead, right?” she asks. “When I signed on [for The Vampire Diaries] at 20, I knew I’d be 26 when I got off. Not that I was afraid that I would be old, but.…” She pauses. “I love the show, but I don’t want to be defined by just the show.”
Which brings us to a supporting role in 2015’s The Final Girls, which Dobrev describes as “a movie within a movie” about a girl (Taissa Farmiga) who is drawn into one of the films that stars her late mother (Malin Akerman), an actress in ’80s-era slasher flicks. And in case she gets bored, there’s maybe, just maybe, an empire of yoga studios with a flagship location in Atlanta. “It’s not ‘official-official’ yet,” warns Dobrev, “but I’ve been talking to a Realtor about a specific property. With acting, I joke and call myself a high-class gypsy—for the rest of my life, I’ll probably be in one city for no more than four months. So I want to try it out first in Atlanta where I can be there and watch over it, because I’m a micromanager.”
As any Instagram follower knows, she’s already on intimate terms with inspirational maxims: Her feed is full of clip-art files of helpful little phrases (“The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do,”) which she collects on her phone and disperses to her 2.6 million followers. “At first, I used [Instagram] for the show,” she admits. “Then it became an addiction. You don’t realize how much you just want to share things, like a thought or a cool experience.”
We exit the restaurant, and Dobrev maps out a route back to her hotel. She’s going to bed early, because all day tomorrow she’s attending a press event for Alcon Air Optix Colors contact lenses. As we part, she makes me promise to text her all the photos from the rock wall—not because she wants to confiscate the evidence, but because she wants to share favorites with her fans. “It’s not that I’m a happier person—I’m just in a very different place,” she says of her post-“yes”-year mentality. “I’ve learned and grown so much. And that’s the craziest and scariest and coolest part about this whole thing: I’m a completely different person than I was a year ago, or five years ago. Five years from now, I’ll be probably unrecognizable.”