Ian Somerhalder is grateful for his TV heartthrob days. 

After getting his big break as the brooding Boone Carlyle on Lost in 2004, the actor scored the role of bad boy vampire Damon Salvatore on The Vampire Diaries in 2009, which catapulted him into stardom.  

Speaking exclusively with PEOPLE about his partnership with Nutro, Somerhalder, 45, looks back on his “smoldering” past, including being featured in Teen People’s 50 Sexiest Guys Ever list two decades ago in October 2004.

While Somerhalder tells PEOPLE he was very conscious of his “heartthrob” image back in the day, he looks back on the title quite differently now as an adult. 

Though the actor notes that being featured on the cover of magazines and being selected for sexy lists were “very relevant” and “moved the needle” in his career at the time, nowadays, he’s much more focused on passion projects like his environmentalist work and raising his children with wife Nikki Reed, 36. 

“Once you reach a certain level, you’re like, ‘Okay, I want to focus on family and the future of farming and food and energy and the big things.’ I don’t need to chase awards and anything that would make me feel better about myself,” he says. 

Looking back on his earlier years, Somerhalder admits there are a “couple of tweaks” he might have made or advice he would have given himself, but they were more business-focused than personal.

“The meat of it all, I don’t think I would really change anything other than maybe with Lost,” he admits. “I maybe complained about craft service or something, showed up late twice, actually really late once. I was so tired from the night before, I slept through my alarms. That’s about as far as I can go.” 

That being said, he’s still incredibly grateful for his earlier roles on Lost and The Vampire Diaries as they introduced a whole new audience of people to his work, both on and off screen. 

“It feels like it was yesterday. But then also too, you realize this was sort of lifetimes ago,” he says of both of his hit shows celebrating milestone anniversaries this year. “I feel such enormous gratitude for this piece of IP and the journey and the character and all the writing both from Lost and from Vampire Diaries. But that path has gotten me to where I feel most authentic anyway, which is in a pair of cowboy boots, feeding the cows and running horses.”