Pictured: Jennie Garth and husband Peter Facinelli, Stacy Keibler, Lauren Conrad, Eric McCormack and wife, Alyssa Milano, Ian Ziering & Jane Krakowski.

Ian Ziering of Dancing With the Stars is opening up about his struggles with dyslexia.

“My career actually started in the second grade as class clown,” says Ziering, 44. “That’s no joke. I was always making people laugh, and it was really to mask a learning disability. … When it came time for me to read out loud, I would crack jokes or create a diversion.”

It was then that he was diagnosed with dyslexia, and for four years he worked to learn to read.

“I would work through flash cards … to help condition me out of seeing letters and numbers backwards and upside-down,” he says. “I finally trained my eyes to look at the top left corner of the page rather then the bottom right side of the page.”

Now, Ziering, who spoke last week at the launch of Intel’s connectingforcare.com in New York, hopes to use his fame as a means for giving back.

“I view having celebrity as having capital, and I don’t know a better way to spend that capital other then helping people,” says Ziering, who also starred in Beverly Hills 90210.

Because his father, who “worked three jobs to make sure that his family never went hungry,” now suffers from renal disease, Ziering is a caregiver and the national spokesperson for the site.

Source

WENN

MySpaceTV is developing a short-form original series starring “Beverly Hills 90210″ alumnus Ian Ziering.

The series is based on “Man vs. Monday,” a comedic short film Ziering directed, produced and starred in that made the festival circuit in 2006. Ziering, who participated in a recent season of “Dancing With the Stars,” will co-produce with NuMedia Studios through his own iMan Prods.

“In the entertainment industry there remains one constant: change,” Ziering said. “I believe the digital world presents tremendous opportunities for the producers who understand it, and I am launching a digital production company, iMan Productions, to take advantage of this opportunity.”

Ziering plays a mid-level cubicle worker who commits some indiscretions over the weekend and faces karma in the form of a rough Monday morning where everything seems to go wrong.

MySpaceTV has been stocking its site with original programming in recent months including series “Quarterlife,” “Special Delivery” and “Roommates.”

MySpace declined comment.

NuMedia is currently in discussions with marketers about brand integration opportunities for “Monday.”

NuMedia Studios is run by Michael Kernan and Huntley Ritter.

Source

WENN

Former Beverly Hills, 90210 star Ian Ziering will bare all if Playgirl bosses get their way. The Dancing With The Stars competitor has been offered $100,000 to strip for an upcoming issue of the soft-porn magazine, according to TMZ.

If he agrees to get naked, he won’t be the first Beverly Hills, 90210 star to appear in Playgirl – Brian Austin Green did it a decade ago.