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Actress Drea de Matteo got her big break on one of the greatest TV shows of all time, The Sopranos. After her character Adriana La Cerva was killed, she turned her Sopranos success into two seasons on the Friends spinoff, Joey.
Credit: HBO
But after 2006, Drea de Matteo had the nomadic actor’s life. She starred in 23 episodes of ABC’s Desperate Housewives, 35 episodes of Disney-owned FX’s Sons of Anarchy, and 36 episodes of NBC’s Shades of Blue.
De Matteo had successfully carved out an acting career for herself with short stints on dozens of shows, but, as it sometimes happens for an actor, the offers dried up in 2022 when she was only able to appear in minor roles in three low-budget films. In 2023, she only appeared in one episode of FX’s The Mayans.
By early 2023, de Matteo had run out of money to pay for a caretaker for her mother, and The Sopranos star took over that duty full-time. By August, her house had flooded, and her bank was about to foreclose.
So, in August, Drea de Matteo did what anyone struggling with financial issues would do: she started an OnlyFans account. At first, she and her husband were only going to host a podcast on the adults-only site, but that quickly evolved into her putting nude photos of herself on the site. She was instantly successful.
Drea de Matteo at Comic Con. Credit: Gage Skidmore, Flickr
I kept putting more pictures up. I was like, holy s–t. In five minutes, I was able to pay back Compass Real Estate who kept the sale of my house. I did it, but I didn’t want to do it. I got a lot of heat for doing it and it went f–king viral and people went nuts.
The actress said she took a lot of heat online after she joined OnlyFans, but with the money pouring in, she continued on the site after she paid off her mortgage.
De Matteo also said that most of the photos capitalize on her most famous character, Adriana La Cerva, from The Sopranos. During the show’s run, Adriana was engaged to Michael Imperioli’s Christopher Moltisanti, and most of her photos try to recreate scenes from that relationship.
The actress from Queens said that she did not do enough after The Sopranos to capitalize on the fame that the show brought her and the roles she could have had if she accepted her new typecast.
Oh well..guess I’m out of the closet…no turning back on my “naked truth” now🗽🗽 #reality #chaos #apocalypse #familyfirst #freedom #truth #onlyfans #lioness pic.twitter.com/jhzH71z8gB
— Drea de Matteo (@dreadematteo) September 18, 2023
Looking back, I think: ‘Silly girl, you had a talent for that. You should have maximized on that accent, being from Queens, being a New Yorker.’ But instead I wanted to work against it and it didn’t work in my favor.
Despite her OnlyFans fame, de Matteo is still an actress at heart. She just wrapped a starring role in Vince Vaughn’s film Nonnas, which also stars Susan Sarandon, Lorraine Bracco, and Talia Shire.
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