Bella Thorne, Lily Allen, Jessie Cave and the Stars Who Opened Direct-to-Fan Subscription Accounts
Bella Thorne, the American actress and singer who first became famous on Disney Channel’s Shake It Up, opened an OnlyFans account in August 2020 and reportedly took more than $1 million in her first 24 hours on the platform, a figure that turned a niche subscription service into front-page entertainment news almost overnight.
In the years since, a steady line of actors, models and musicians has followed Thorne onto direct-to-fan platforms, each with a different reason, a different type of content and a very different reaction from the public, and as of 2026 the move no longer carries the shock value it did when the first famous names signed up.
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Bella Thorne Set the Template in August 2020
Thorne built her early career on screen, moving from Disney Channel to films such as Blended and The Babysitter and later directing her own projects, and by 2020 she already had tens of millions of social media followers who could be converted into paying subscribers.
Her launch was reportedly followed by more than $2 million in revenue within the first week, but it also drew a backlash from full-time creators after subscribers complained that a pay-per-view post had not matched its promotion, and soon after the platform capped pay-per-view prices and tips, a change many creators blamed on the episode.
Carol Alt, the American supermodel who appeared on more than 500 magazine covers in the 1980s and later acted in films and television, joined the trend in 2021, when she was 60 years old, and made clear in interviews that she would keep her page tasteful and non-nude while sharing modeling and lifestyle images with long-time fans.
Coco Austin, the model, actress and wife of rapper and actor Ice-T, also opened a subscription page and used it for glamour photo sets of the kind she had built her career on, a launch that fit neatly with her long public image and drew more curiosity than criticism, as dated rundowns of celebrity OnlyFans accounts from the period show.
The traditional route has not vanished, and performers such as Jessica Lee Keller, who danced her way into Disney Channel’s Teen Beach Movie films, still build careers through auditions, choreography credits and studio roles, but the subscription model gave older and established stars a second income stream that no casting director controls.
Fans Now Expect Live, Two-Way Contact
What changed most after Thorne‘s August 2020 launch was the relationship between performer and audience, since paying subscribers began to expect replies to direct messages, personalized clips and the sense that the famous person on the other side was talking to them specifically.
Adult entertainment platforms had already been moving in that direction for years, with paid messaging, custom video requests and private live shows all becoming standard features for independent creators.
The most direct form of that contact is live video in which both people are on camera at once, and it has grown into a niche of its own beside subscription feeds and fan messaging apps. Adult entertainment has always followed the demand for more personal contact, with free cam to cam sites offering two-way private video chat where the viewer can switch on their own webcam during a session.
On OnlyFans, the same demand shows up in pay-per-view messages and tips, the two paid extras whose prices the platform capped in the weeks after Thorne‘s launch in 2020.
For stars such as Thorne, Alt and Austin, that expectation of contact has become part of the price of entry, and answering messages from subscribers paying between $4.99 and $49.99 a month can take up a large share of a creator’s time.
Lily Allen and Jessie Cave Brought the Trend to British Stars
Lily Allen, the English singer behind hits such as Smile and The Fear, opened an OnlyFans account in 2024 devoted entirely to pictures of her feet, after fans repeatedly asked about them on a foot-fetish website that rated her highly, and she later said on her BBC podcast Miss Me? that the page earned her more than her music did on Spotify.
The reaction was largely amused, with fans and fellow musicians treating it as a pointed comment on how little artists earn per stream, and Allen‘s 2025 album West End Girl later brought her back into the charts.
Jessie Cave, the English actress best known as Lavender Brown in the Harry Potter film series, launched an OnlyFans page in 2025 built around her hair, a niche some subscribers had requested, and she said publicly that the content was not explicit and that the money would help support her family and her work as a writer and comedian.
The news drew some criticism from Harry Potter fans online, but Cave responded with humor on Instagram and the story largely settled into one more example of a working actor finding a direct audience between screen jobs.
A quick reference to the five launches covered here:
| Name | Known for | Launch | Content focus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bella Thorne | Shake It Up, The Babysitter | August 2020 | Photo sets, pay-per-view posts |
| Carol Alt | 1980s supermodel, actress | 2021 | Non-nude modeling images |
| Coco Austin | Model, actress, Ice Loves Coco | Early 2020s | Glamour photo sets |
| Lily Allen | Smile, The Fear | 2024 | Feet photos |
| Jessie Cave | Lavender Brown in Harry Potter | 2025 | Hair-focused content |
The common thread across these profiles is that each star set the boundaries of the page personally, from Alt‘s non-nude rule to Allen‘s single-subject account, and the same control extends to pricing, which on OnlyFans is chosen by the creator within a monthly subscription range of $4.99 to $49.99, with pay-per-view messages and tips charged on top for subscribers who want more than the standard feed.
