Harry Potter star Jessie Cave is the latest actor to turn to OnlyFans to supplement her income.
“I’ve earned more, easily, than my entire acting career within one year,” she told The Times. Cave is best known as the Hogwarts student Lavender Brown but has also appeared in shows such as “Trollied” and “Call the Midwife”. She joined the online subscription platform known for its adult content in 2025 after receiving yet another audition rejection.
Posting non-explicit “hair content”, including videos of her brushing and braiding her hair while dressed as an elf, a maid or Lavender Brown, Cave said she made £15,000 on her first day and now has a “loyal bunch” of subscribers. “I do predict more people needing to use other platforms to make money when they’re not being an artist,” she said. “Everyone will be paying for everything.”
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Latest Videos FromThe Week
It is a “dystopian world view”, said the paper’s deputy culture editor Alice Jones, “where every interaction is monetised and, eventually, frankly, pornified”.
Regaining ‘control’
It is a story increasingly common among “Hollywood’s former middle class”, said Melissa Fleur Afshar on Newsweek. From Jaime Pressly to Shannon Elizabeth, some of the “most recognisable stars from the box-set and cable era” who were losing out on work and slipping off the cultural radar are “now migrating to OnlyFans instead”.
It looks like the “sole promise” of the site is “money and continued attention”, but in an acting industry “reeling from high-profile lawsuits and allegations of exploitation”, OnlyFans actually offers these people “control”.
“For decades, Hollywood operated in a way where actors relied heavily on gatekeepers,” said Estelle Keeber, a visibility expert and PR strategist. Paid subscriber platforms give users “direct access” to an audience “without needing permission from an industry middleman”.
‘Butts for Tour Buses’
It is not just actors. Lily Allen’s OnlyFans side gig in 2024, which netted her $10 (£7) a month per subscriber, “added to the long-running conversation around abysmal streaming payouts” for musicians, said Vice. The singer eventually stopped selling videos and pictures of her feet, saying “it wasn’t that fun”.
“Imagine being an artist and having nearly eight million monthly listeners on Spotify but earning more money from having 1,000 people subscribe to pictures of your feet,” she told The Standard last year.
The financial structure of streaming platforms means artists are increasingly “having to juggle budgets that resemble household accounts, such as vans against fuel, hotels against sofa-surfing and merchandise against storage fees”, said Paul Oliver, a digital innovation lecturer at Edinburgh Napier University, in The Conversation. “One cancelled show can tip a tour from workable to loss-making.”
Kate Nash used OnlyFans to fund the European leg of her 2024 tour after post-Brexit taxes left her in debt and struggling to pay everyone involved, in a campaign she called “Butts for Tour Buses”. Earlier this year, she told the Commons’ Culture Select Committee the only reason it was possible to continue tours “is because I sell pictures of my bum on the internet”.
