Image Credit: Bob Mahoney/The CWThe Vampire Diaries returns tonight with its first new episode of 2011 (check out our primer on where we left off), and no one may be more excited to see it than Ian Somerhalder: As his Twitter followers may recall, he had walking pneumonia late last year — for two months. Tonight’s episode is the last one he shot while sick.

“I had to do ADR on four episodes extensively. Two episodes I had to loop completely. Literally, almost every single word I said,” Somerhalder told us earlier this month. “It was a battle. There was nothing I could do. First of all, you  have to take a bunch of medications so you can actually speak and breathe, and that dopes you up, and then you’re like one of those little bobblehead Chihuahuas. You’re just kinda goin’. When you can’t breathe out of your nose, or you have a mouth full of cough drops so you’re not coughing through the entire scene, it makes it difficult. I’m not making excuses for any kind of bad performance, but it just leveled me, and it leveled Damon. But it’s gone, and I’m done with it. So I’m not gonna be boring anymore.”  READ FULL STORY »