"Skins" Actress Gives Career New Life With OnlyFans

The ups and downs of life as an actor can be incredibly taxing at times. One minute, your schedule is full as can be. Press tours, roles big and small; then suddenly, nothing. It’s far too common in Hollywood, and it’s even happened to well-known actresses like Drea de Matteo and Shannon Elizabeth. That’s part of the reason more and more creatives are making an OnlyFans account. For some, it’s all the income they need, for others, it helps them fund their other interests without the added stress of trying to nail an audition.

Despite a starring role opposite her identical twin sister Kathryn on the UK’s universally-acclaimed teen drama Skins, actress Megan Prescott was riding the struggle bus. The actress had only £300 to her name and her on-call work at a local distillery stopped due to the COVID-19 pandemic (with her boss refusing to give her paid leave). One of her friends innocently recommended she join OnlyFans. Skins already had plenty of NSFW content starring Prescott circling about, so the actress figured there wasn’t much of a reason to say no. She says joining OnlyFans gave her a realization.

“I’d spent so many years in acting, trying to get things moving and nothing [was] happening,” Prescott said. “Going on OnlyFans and realizing all this content that I was making for free, people would pay for and people would like to pay for, just changed my entire point of view and it really did improve my creative outputs.” 

Prescott says she’s now made three times what she made on Skins. She says of her work on the show, “We worked it out by the hour once, and it was minimum wage. Of course, £400 a week to a 16-year-old I was like ‘I’m rich’ but when you look back… Our contracts also meant we don’t see any money from any streaming platforms.” 

Just like any other large industry, the film industry will always do its best to maximize profit. Whether it means sneaking predatory clauses into contracts, paying crews and actors as little as possible, or cutting corners on safety equipment. These are problems that OnlyFans creators don’t have, hence the platform’s popularity among actors. As Prescott knows, the math is easy. A flat rate for a steamy scene that’ll be plastered all over the internet anyways, or thousands of dollars a day for work that’s entirely yours, shared on a website where you control who sees it?  

Actors say OnlyFans is the antidote to the predestined trajectory of one’s career in Hollywood. Maitland Ward, known for Boy Meets World and The Bold and the Beautiful, saw her OnlyFans page as a way out of Hollywood, and a way into more money. “On Boy Meets World I think I made $20,000 or $25,000 an episode,” the actress recalls. “You don’t have all the guarantees out there,” Ward said, adding, “In porn or OnlyFans, I can get six figures a month.” Ward says that once Hollywood is done with an actor, it’s really tough for them to find work. Her favorite part, fan connection, is also difficult, something OnlyFans made easier. Rather than changing who an actor is as a person for Hollywood’s needs, OnlyFans allows actors to create whatever they want, charge whatever they want and keep 80% of their proceeds. “Hollywood wanted to mold and form these young actors into what they wanted them to be, what they needed them to be for the company and for the audience to what they felt would identify with.” OnlyFans is a place for actors and other creators alike to be themselves, no labels, no judgement.

Prescott, for reasons outlined, thinks the flood of actors to OnlyFans will only continue to grow. “I do think we are going to see more and more mainstream actors turning to making their own productions for things like OFTV [OnlyFans’ free video arm featuring content made by OnlyFans creators] because it’s just a liberty that you don’t get.” 

Prescott is using her earnings to stay busy. She created a one-woman play in 2024, Really Good Exposure, performing in Edinburgh at the Fringe Festival and in London. Prescott is also teaming up with OnlyFans star Lily Phillips on Headline Newds, an OnlyFans show aimed at explaining climate change in a sexy way.