Featured Image Credit: Paul Archuleta/Getty Images/Instagram/dreadematteo
Topics: Celebrity, OnlyFans, TV and Film, Money, Entertainment
Jess Battison
Topics: Celebrity, OnlyFans, TV and Film, Money, Entertainment
Being an absolute classic of a show, you might think the stars of The Sopranos are still balling from its success alone.
Earning itself titles like ‘Greatest TV Show of All Time’, there’s no denying the TV hit’s legendary status. And yet, for one actor, it’s something else that bolstered her bank account.
Drea de Matteo, who, of course, played Adriana La Cerva in the noughties hit, said she makes more money through OnlyFans than she did while acting.
And the 52-year-old has been in plenty other big shows too such as Desperate Housewives and Sons of Anarchy.
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She previously spoke about the platform enabling her to pay off her mortgage debt with her teen son helping to edit her content.
Matteo almost lost her home before she signed up to OnlyFans and quickly turned around her fortune.
She explained to Metro.co.uk how she racked in more from her snaps and videos on the platform than she did working in acting for over a decade.
“I never got paid a lot to act, that’s the truth. I was always paid the lowest, to a degree, I would say,” the star said.
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“There wasn’t a lot of money when I first started out with Sopranos. I was a day player, then I became a recurring [character] – they were hard-nosed, the way they negotiated with us. It wasn’t until the end of the Sopranos that I was actually making a normal episodic pay.”
When Matteo left The Sopranos to work on Friends spin-off Joey, she said she got the ‘most decent pay’ she had thanks to being on network TV for 21 episodes. But then she claims FX basically ‘didn’t really pay her at all’ to play Wendy Case in Sons of Anarchy.
“I went and did Desperate Housewives instead, but that was a one-year contract because I didn’t know if I would want to be there, too. So that’s a lower pay scale,” the actor said.
“I never really made a ton of money, so yes, I made more money on OnlyFans. It’s a true story. I know that sounds crazy but it’s not sustainable money for the long term.”
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Matteo added that her friends ‘jokingly’ advised she post some snaps of her feet to save the house.
“Did I want to do it? F**k no, I didn’t want to do it. I was totally anonymous. I never anticipated being thrown to the wolves the way I was when it came out,” she said.
But when the trolls came, Matteo ‘embraced it’ and it’s given her ‘the financial freedom’ to be able to say ‘F**k Hollywood’.