Hollyoaks star Sarah Jayne Dunn has said she is "more financially stable" after reportedly being axed from the Channel 4 soap for refusing to delete her OnlyFans page.
The actress, who had played Mary Richardson on the show since 1996, was reportedly unable to 'reach a solution' with bosses over her site content.
40-year-old Sarah confirmed she was leaving Hollyoaks last summer due to the conflict of interest. She now regularly updates her loyal fans with exclusive racy pics and said she is much better off financially.
The mum-of-three opened up about the realities of a soap star's salary and said it used to be a struggle to support her family.
"There was a reason I was obviously looking for something else to do alongside Hollyoaks and I think the misconception that people have is that if you’re on telly you must be making a fortune.
"I think people instantly go, 'Oh you’re on telly so, one, you must be happy and two, you must be really rich,' and those things – just like any job – are not true," she told Daily Star.
Sarah said actors need to be "very, very busy" in order to make enough money to support yourself and added that she "wasn't very busy".
The soap star said she found things very difficult after the Covid-19 pandemic and needed a way to pay her bills.
Since starting her OnlyFans account, Sarah said she no longer needs to take whatever jobs she can get and can instead focus on the work she wants to do.
"The beauty of being more financially stable is that I’m not having to go out looking for work for the sake of looking for acting work."
Before posting adult content on the site, Sarah had already been doing photoshoots and wanted a way to move away from Instagram and make money off it.
She has described the move to OnlyFans as "the best thing that could have happened".
Sarah has previously opened up about how Hollyoaks "isn't well paid".
"There's a huge misconception that people on TV shows earn huge amounts of money, it just isn't the case," she told The Sun.
"People talk about massive six-figure salaries but the reality is that if your character isn't in a big storyline for a while you can end up struggling some months."
At the time of her exit from the long-running show, a Hollyoaks spokesperson told the publication: "Hollyoaks is a youth-facing drama with many young viewers, who follow our cast very closely, both in the soap and outside of it.
"We take our responsibility to our young audience very seriously and therefore the show does not allow any Hollyoaks cast members to be active on certain 18+ websites.
"We had hoped we could reach a resolution with Sarah that would allow her to remain in her role as Mandy, but we respect her choice to continue to produce content on OnlyFans."
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