Former Nickelodeon star Amanda Bynes is the latest celebrity to join OnlyFans. Announcing the account on Instagram, she said she won’t be posting any ‘sleazy’ content and subscribers will be asked to pay a $50 (£37) monthly fee.

‘I’m on OnlyFans now!’ she wrote. ‘Disclaimer: I’m only doing OnlyFans to chat with my fans through DMs. I won’t be posting any sleazy content. Excited to join.’

OnlyFans is an adult subscription service where creators can share videos and photos and chat with their subscribers. Although it is predominantly used for sexual and NSFW (not safe for work) content, it can also be used for non-sexual content too.

Bynes, who rose to fame as a child actor on shows like All That and The Amanda Show in the late ‘90s before going on to star in hit films like What a Girl Wants, She’s the Man, Hairspray and Easy A, appears to be opting for the latter.

There is no doubt Bynes’ decision to join the platform will spark commentary amongst fans who have followed her career. Having grown up in the public eye during the misogynistic media frenzy of the noughties, Bynes has struggled in recent years, particularly in the past decade. In 2010, at the age of 24, she announced her retirement from the entertainment industry – the same year Easy A, her last film, hit cinemas.

In 2012, she was charged with DUI after she side-swiped a police car in West Hollywood. She was released on $5000 bail after refusing a sobriety test. The following year, she was detained after allegedly starting a small fire in a stranger’s driveway and was hospitalised for 72 hours, but no charges were filed. At this point, her parents initiated a conservatorship akin to that of Britney Spears, where they controlled all her personal and professional affairs.

Despite already being extended several times, in 2021, Bynes’ conservatorship was extended for another two years at the request of her mother. However, in March 2022, a judge terminated the nine-year legal arrangement and ruled that it was ‘no longer needed or required’.

During that period, Bynes was diagnosed with bipolar while also dealing with ongoing mental illness struggles and drug abuse. In an interview with Paper in 2018, the actress said she had been sober for four years and thanked her parents for ‘really helping me get back on track’. However, in 2023, she was placed on a psychiatric hold after being found walking naked in Los Angeles, according to reports from TMZ. She had been scheduled to appear alongside her All That cast mates at a ‘90s Con panel that weekend but did not end up attending. Last December, she co-hosted an art show and clothing pop-up in Los Angeles with designer Austin Babbit, but she has otherwise been largely off the radar.

All of which has, understandably, turned Bynes into a figure of concern, particularly for fans who hailed her as a teenage icon and rising comedian during the early years of her career – and those who watched Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV last summer.

The second episode of the docuseries explored the alleged toxic culture on set of the two shows that made her famous, All That and The Amanda Show. It revealed that Bynes severed ties with the producer and writer of The Amanda Show, Dan Schneider, who has been accused of sexually abusing children who worked on his shows, allegations which he firmly denies and has filed a lawsuit for defamation. The series also revealed that two crew members of All That, Jason Michael Handy and dialogue coach Brian Peck, became convicted sex offenders.

Based on Bynes’ decision to quit the industry in her mid-20s, her subsequent behaviour and her ongoing erratic social media presence, it’s clear that her experiences of child stardom have left their mark.

Perhaps, though, Bynes’ decision to join OnlyFans is a way of reclaiming her celebrity and connecting with fans who want to financially support her, rather than those who mock or speculate about her circumstances online.

She is not the first celebrity to pivot onto the platform anyway, and she will not be the last. The singer Lily Allen recently revealed that she makes more from her OnlyFans account, where she sells pictures of her feet and charges subscribers $10 (£7.50) per month, than she does from her music streams.
In March, Harry Potter star Jessie Cave revealed that she was launching her account, which will include ‘the best quality hair sounds’ and ‘very sensual stuff’. She also noted that she was making the page, which was ‘not a sexual one,’ for financial reasons.

‘One year. I’ll try for one year. My aim? To get the house safe, cover the arsenic/lead wallpaper, build a new roof etc,’ she wrote on her Substack. ‘My aim? To get out of debt. My aim? To empower myself? To prove to those in the past who have misjudged me that I’m not so sweet? To put time into something I never invested in before: self-love.’

The singer Kate Nash also drew attention last November after announcing that she had started an OnlyFans account to fund her next tour. ‘It’s not news to say that the music business has been built on unethical practices,’ she wrote last year. ‘The cost of recording, releasing and touring a record in the same year no longer make financial sense. I saw artists posting that even if they were to drive the van themselves, they could not financially make touring work.’

‘I did it by playing festivals all summer, saving up a nest egg and putting all of that money into touring,’ she continued. ‘Even that didn’t end up being enough. I started an OnlyFans account in November and am now selling pictures of my arse online to subsidise touring losses.’

Creative industries are on their knees and even ‘big names’ are having to come up with new ways to bolster their revenue streams. While OnlyFans remains a controversial choice, at least for now, it is one we should think twice about before casting judgement. If earning money through connecting with fans will help Bynes, then it sounds like a positive venture to us.