A Harry Potter star has confessed that she’s made more from OnlyFans in a year than she has from her “entire acting career”.
Jessie Cave, who played Lavender Brown in The Half Blood Prince and both Deathly Hallows movies, gave an interview with The Times in which she revealed that a series of failed auditions had left her desperately trying to cope.
The 39-year-old has four children and was open about her financial problems, explaining that she even considered working in a supermarket but realized her Harry Potter fame might make that difficult, “I couldn’t go and, say, work in 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.
She added: “I could retrain but I can’t afford to do a degree. I had a breakdown and I thought, that’s it with acting, I give up. But also we have no money. It was a point of complete desperation.”
“I am not upset about the prospect of no more ‘Harry Potter’ conventions”
It was then that she finally considered OnlyFans. Her plan was to just do a few months and try to make £5000 that would give her and her family “time to work out what we’re going to do”. Cave underlined in a previous interview that her OnlyFans is “not a sexual one” and that it would instead focus on “sensual” videos of her brushing her long, lustrous hair.
Harry Potter star Jessie Cave says she makes more on OnlyFans than from her entire acting career
— non aesthetic things (@PicturesFoIder) August 11, 2026
Cave, who played Lavender Brown, says she earns money on OnlyFans by posting videos of herself brushing and styling her hair pic.twitter.com/ilsIBYcl3V
Within a single day, Cave said she made £15,000, and over the last year she says she’s “earned more, easily, than my entire acting career within one year”. But she also admits there’s a “stigma” that comes with an OnlyFans career due to its association with adult content. This stigma is apparently not something shared with the Trump administration, which earlier this year deemed OnlyFans models to have “extraordinarily ability” that lets them get an exclusive visa.
But Cave admitted she lost a booking at a Harry Potter convention due to her OnlyFans account, “They explained it was because it’s a ‘family show and OnlyFans is affiliated with porn. 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!”
However, there is an unpleasant side to this line of work. She said that she regularly receives “gross” and “nasty” messages from men that have left her “a little scared”. However, when it comes to Harry Potter, it seems she’s happy to leave it behind: “I am not upset about the prospect of no more ‘Harry Potter’ conventions. There’s going to be a new cast now and it’s a different time. Plus, I have done conventions for over 15 years and have enough photos and wizard memorabilia.”
