Nina Dobrev Is Finding Herself All Over the World
Nina Dobrev has come a long way since her Degrassi days and The Vampire Diaries. Now, the actress and producer is taking flight with several new projects in the works.
PENDANT KWIAT • RINGS (L-R) ANTONIA MILETTO, KWIAT • EARRINGS KWIAT • DRESS AND BRA TOM FORD
Nina Dobrev loves jewelry. “Of course I do,” she says. “But we all do. Sometimes the jewelry is the outfit.” It makes it easy to fall in love with a gemstone, Dobrev tells Only Natural Diamonds, when you get to be around some “really special pieces” as she does, on the occasional red carpet and photo shoot.
For instance, consider the 4.1-carat pear-shaped Fancy Light Yellow Kwiat diamond she wears with a black lace Tom Ford dress for this story. “It was so gorgeous and simple, on this delicate chain. It looked like it was floating below my neck,” Dobrev says over her first cup of morning tea. “I wanted to take it home. I kept imagining them gifting it to me.”
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Marshall Heyman is a New York-based writer for television and a freelance journalist. His work has appeared in publications such as Only Natural Diamonds, the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker, W, Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar, the New York Times, Vogue, Town and Country, InStyle, Cosmopolitan, New York, and many others.
If that dream became reality, Dobrev winks, “I’d only wear it out on special occasions, but in my house, I’d never take it off.”
For all her jokes about getting to take home expensive bijoux and treasures on a whim because of her fame and beauty, “I actually buy myself a lot of jewelry,” Dobrev explains. “I like to celebrate milestones and things I’m proud of.”
Deserving of Diamonds: How Nina Dobrev Began Her Jewelry Collection
Growing up between Bulgaria and Canada, Nina Dobrev had a modest upbringing. Buying an expensive watch, even after being on a long-running series like The Vampire Diaries, for instance, “felt irresponsible for a long time,” she says.
I actually buy myself a lot of jewelry. I like to celebrate milestones and things I’m proud of.
For years, she told herself she’d buy herself one when, maybe, she scored a big role in an action movie. “And then I was in xXx with Vin Diesel almost a decade ago, in 2017,” she says. “But I wasn’t the lead, so I didn’t think I deserved it. I just kept pushing it off, chickening out.”
While traveling in Europe, she told a friend that she’d always wanted a Rolex Day-Date. And then they saw an even pricier, more glamorous version in a window display, “one that I definitely couldn’t justify spending money on.”
“I asked myself, ‘Why don’t I feel like I deserve this? I should be proud of what I’ve done,” Dobrev recalls. She walked right into Rolex. “They gave me a glass of Champagne, and it was over. I bought the watch.”
Watches are like tattoos. It’s an addiction.
Now she has five luxury timepieces, including a second Rolex Day-Date and a vintage diamond-encrusted Cartier from the 1970s. “Watches are like tattoos. It’s an addiction,” she says.
Nina Dobrev tends to wear a lot of everyday jewelry. She rarely removes her small diamond stud earrings with a twist backing, in part because she loves them, in part. After all, they’re not so easy to take off. “I’m terrified of losing them,” she says.
The Friendship Jewelry Nina Dobrev Shares With Her Inner Circle
And then she has some stackable rings. There’s a Cartier Love ring that she and four of her Hollywood girlfriends all wear to commemorate their closeness, including Dobrev’s hairstylist, Riawna Capri, and their good friend Julianne Hough. And then there’s the Ecksand ring she and a few of her non-scene friends share, too.
“We’re saying that we’ll love each other forever,” Dobrev says.
If it all sounds a little bit twee from the outside, like Sisterhood of the Traveling Friendship Ring or like Carrie Bradshaw marrying herself on Sex and the City, it’s actually “a beautiful thing,” insists Dobrev. “I love everyone I surround myself with. We’re all like-minded people.”
Even if they don’t share a gold band, the truth is Nina Dobrev insists her “best friend” is her dog, Maverick, a mutt of 15 or so canine varieties she rescued from the Van Nuys shelter. Dobrev was at Coachella, “scrolling through my feed, not sober,” and she saw Maverick, and “I called the Uber immediately and drove back.”
Diamonds and Dogs Are a Girl’s Best Friend
“It was love at first sight,” Dobrev says. Still, she couldn’t decide if she wanted to take Maverick home or Maverick’s brother, Goose. (Dobrev named them after characters in Top Gun, but “the sequel hadn’t come out yet,” she notes.)
“I was with them alone for 45 minutes, and I heard the doorbell ring, and I said I’d take them both,” Dobrev recalls.
Goose lasted a week at her home: “It was too much energy, too much poop, too many accidents.” Her friend Chace Crawford (Gossip Girl) wound up taking him and renaming him, Shiner. “I told him I really wanted him to keep the name Goose, but Goose really is very much a sweet little Shiner and still in our lives,” Dobrev says, laughing.
Maverick, now nine years old, is “very much like me in a lot of ways,” says Dobrev. “She’s super intense and very talkative. She barks a lot. But she loves her alone time. We’re together all day and every day, but at night, she’d rather sleep on the floor than in the bed, which is my nightmare. She’s very protective and attached, though. I bring her everywhere, but we do have an unhealthy codependent dynamic.”
Dobrev travels with Maverick all over the world. “I’m constantly living out of a suitcase,” she says. After a trip to New York for this shoot, she was off to France and Italy to unplug with family and friends. Though she has a house in Nevada and her family lives in Europe, when asked where she considers home, i.e., where’s the bed she most feels comfortable in, Dobrev responds, cannily: “Delta One.”
How Nina Dobrev Is Taking Control
“It does not matter where I am, as long as I’m horizontal,” says Nina Dobrev. “But I’m ready to slow down. I’ve been ready to slow down for a while, but it’s hard to say no when the jobs are wonderful and exciting.” Up next: General Admission, premiering in June.
She’s recently shot films in Canada and Australia, the latter a movie called The Get Out opposite Russell Crowe, Teresa Palmer, and Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad), who is married to one of Dobrev’s longtime friends, Lauren Parsekian.
Awkward alert: She and Paul had to kiss onscreen. “We laughed a lot about it, we thought it was so funny,” Dobrev says. “It’s hilarious. It’s like kissing your brother.”
As she spends more time in Hollywood, Dobrev has realized that it’s important to develop her own projects. “It feels good and fulfilling,” she explains, of diving more into writing and producing, especially female-driven projects. “I want to feel like I have some control over my career instead of waiting for the phone to ring.”
That, and she enjoys working with her friends. She’s currently writing an action-buddy comedy with her writing partner, and she’s hoping another pal will direct. “It’s the life hack I imagine Seth Rogen has figured out,” she says. “He’s a fellow Canadian, and I’m loosely trying to follow in his footsteps. I just want to work with good people.”
It’s always surprising, but it’s really sweet when people appreciate your work. That’s why we do what we do.
To this day, Dobrev is perhaps still most recognized for her many seasons on the breakout hit The Vampire Diaries. She played Elena, caught in a love triangle with two vampire brothers (Paul Wesley and Ian Somerhalder). The show ended in 2017, around the same time as that Vin Diesel action movie, but it is being rediscovered by new audiences “all the time,” Dobrev says.
Some of those audiences weren’t even born when the series first debuted. “It’s a fresh show to them,” she continued. It was on Netflix, and then it switched over to HBO Max. The series has now landed on Peacock. “It doesn’t make any sense, but I’m not complaining.”
“It’s always surprising, but it’s really sweet when people appreciate your work,” Dobrev says. “That’s why we do what we do.”
Photographer: Mark Lim
Stylist: Bailey Moon
Creative Director: Lizzy Oppenheimer
Hair Stylist: Shinya Nakagawa
Makeup Artist: Kale Teter
Manicurist: Yukie Miyakawa
Entertainment Director At Large: Glynis Costin
Creative Production: Petty Cash Production
Lighting Director: Butch Hogan, Erik Snyder
Digital Tech: Pierce Harrison
Swing: Chris Harth
Styling Assistant: Laura Spriet
