"Harry Potter" Actress Outpaces Her Acting Career's Earnings on OnlyFans

Actress Jessie Cave opened up an OnlyFans account in March of last year. She earned $20,000 on the first day. 

Whether you’re opening up an OnlyFans page or an ice cream parlor, $20,000 is a whole hell of a lot to make on your first day, so how did Jessie Cave do it?

The 39 year-old British actress says she made this much without posting anything sexually explicit. Cave has leaned into a niche physical feature which perhaps makes her almost instantly recognizable: her hair. 

Die-hard Harry Potter fans know Cave as Lavender Brown, the love interest of one of the series’ main characters, Ron Weasley. Cave immortalized her signature, long straight locks in the role, and apparently, people are paying big bucks to watch Cave’s hair-centric content.

Cave says she was initially ashamed of joining OnlyFans, having done so by necessity at a low point in her career. The structure of OnlyFans worked way better for her notoriety as an actress. “I couldn’t go and, say, work at a supermarket because I can’t afford the childcare, and also I don’t want people shouting Harry Potter spells at me as I work at Tesco,” Cave explained. At the time, she wrote on her Substack account that joining OnlyFans was “proof of my failure to make (or rather, keep hold of) money as an actress and writer,” feeling like she had “nothing to show for 18 years of work in the arts industry.” But over time, she realized the decision to join OnlyFans “genuinely saved our lives”. 

Cave is engaged to comedian Alfie Brown, with whom she shares four children. She says that what she expected to be a temporary solution became more profitable than her entire career as an actress. “I’ve earned more, easily, than my entire acting career within one year,” Cave said. The actress says she still plans on keeping her page nudity-free, but she admits, “I don’t know how long I can last if I don’t start giving more.”

The sad part is, Cave didn’t need to be making explicit content on OnlyFans to be affected by the stigma surrounding the platform. In September of last year, she was passed over for a Harry Potter convention just because she had an OnlyFans account. The convention’s organizers explanation followed the same misleading, no-room-for-nuance criteria that we’ve seen from naysayers everywhere. The convention wanted to be seen as a “family show” but “OnlyFans is affiliated with porn.” Obviously, this upset and befuddled Cave. She wrote on Substack, “This was baffling to me, as some actors who do conventions (most actors, actually) have done TV and films in which they’ve done sex scenes and nudity, I’m just playing with my hair!” 

OnlyFans creators have been navigating some intense discrimination from fundraising sites, banks and even social media platforms for a long time now, with so-called “morality clauses” unjustly requiring blatant prejudice be intertwined with online adult work. Even for creators only looking to get to know their fans more intimately, the mere act of having an OnlyFans account can be stigmatized.

While she may ramp her content up in the future, for now, Cave has enjoyed the attention she’s received from fans of her hair. She says that the folks appreciating her hair don’t make her uncomfortable. “They’re never sexually depraved or lascivious. It’s never dirty comments, but I do get lots of interest in the hair thing and I just thought, ‘F–k it, I’m going to do something that is very niche.’” Cave adds that on OnlyFans, she’s feeling confidence she’s never felt before while playing up her signature look. “For so long I’ve just been this quirky figure. After having four kids and feeling invisible for so long, that was really appealing to me.”