Every now and then, getting a pink slip at work is the best thing that could possibly happen to you. Meet Sarah Jayne Dunn, a former Hollyoaks star who is now a self-made millionaire courtesy of OnlyFans. The powers that be at Hollyoaks may have sacked her for being “too spicy,” but it turns out they did her a favor. Dunn’s reportedly made somewhere in the neighborhood of £1 million since departing the show. If you’re wondering if that’s more than she made on the show—yes. Yes, it is. Turns out that if studios want to keep their actors out of the spicy corners of the internet, they need to add a zero to their checks.
Sarah Jayne Dunn was born in Leigh, Greater Manchester, and trained as an actress from a young age. She rose to fame in the role of Mandy Richardson on Hollyoaks, making her first appearance in 1996 (y’know, back when the Spice Girls were still at the top of all the charts). She instantly became a fan favorite and was one of the longest-running cast members on the soap. She built a reputation for being down-to-earth while having the looks of a runway model, playing a key part in making Hollyoaks racy before OnlyFans was even a thing. She left the show multiple times, once in 2006 and then again in 2017, but she kept being brought back, proving that she was the sex-appeal glue that held the show together.
In 2021, Sarah decided to launch an OnlyFans account where she shared “tasteful lingerie and pin-up style photos.” The Hollyoaks producers didn’t like that and informed Sarah that her presence on an adults-only platform didn’t align with their “family audience.” They told her to delete the account. She refused. She was cut from the show in November of 2021. Public opinion was divided, but many of her fans pointed out that the soap ran storylines infinitely more explicit than anything she’d posted. According to Sarah, she finds OnlyFans to be a source of empowerment that gives her a place to embrace her own brand of feminism. Said Sarah, “I wasn’t doing anything shameful. I just wanted control of my image.”
Currently, Sarah’s earned at least a seven-figure sum since leaving Hollyoaks. Catpig Ltd (her company that operates as the vehicle for her OnlyFans platform) made roughly £500,000 in just two years, with assets totaling somewhere around £369,000, give or take. Dunn was even able to launch Catpig Properties Ltd, a separate company dedicated to buying rental and investment properties (i.e., the company bought a £250,000 home in Cheshire purely as an investment). According to Dunn, she’s made more money in two years on OnlyFans than she ever did in 25 years on television.
Looking beyond the money, Sarah Jayne Dunn’s her own boss who is fully in charge of her image. She doesn’t have to use a script someone else has written, doesn’t have to dance around censorship rules, and because she is the wardrobe department, there’s nobody vetoing her lingerie choices. It turns out that Mandy Richardson’s biggest plot twist was learning how to capture and monetize her own angles. Since finding success on OnlyFans, Dunn’s become a bit of a spokesperson for creator independence, openly discussing empowerment and bodily autonomy on her mainstream social media channels.
Her journey to owning her image isn’t without its sticky patches. Dunn is the mother of an 8-year-old little boy and has acknowledged that deciding how to talk with him about what she does was a tricky business. She says that she frames her work as owning her choices and working hard to provide for her family—something many moms with OnlyFans pages can relate to. During lockdown in 2020, countless women joined OnlyFans as creators in order to make ends meet while they were unable to work or access childcare. Dunn may be a celebrity on the platform, but her openness about how motherhood informs her content creation business proves that she isn’t an outlier—she’s just one of the few women who can be open in public about what she does and why. Moms on OnlyFans aren’t the real scandal here. The fact that so many full-time jobs in vanilla industries don’t pay a living wage is. You can’t exactly blame a mom for paying for groceries via ring light when (A) her previous job didn’t pay the bills and (B) there are subscribers showing up in droves to see her content.
Getting sacked from Hollyoaks was a bummer, but it made Sarah Jayne Dunn richer than she ever was while under contract for the network. She’s not alone in her choice to join OnlyFans as a means of controlling her image and finding financial security. Athletes, reality stars, and even some of her fellow actors have all made the move to OnlyFans. Denise Richards, Megan Barton Hanson, and Kerry Katona are all running pages on the adults-only platform and cashing in big on having full control of their image. If studios want loyalty and exclusivity from their actors, then they need to be ready to pay up. If you don’t pay your talent what they’re worth, then there’s a platform ready and waiting for them where they can find a better angle, better lighting, and a much better paycheck.
