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Shannon Elizabeth is no stranger to breaking the internet.
Following the release of 1999’s “American Pie,” the cumming-of-age film that launched Elizabeth to stardom (and sex symbol status), she decided she needed a website.
“I think I was one of the first actors to have one,” she recalls to Variety. “The only people who had websites at the time were porn stars. That was it. So, everyone thought, ‘Why are you putting a website up?’ But we thought that was the next step in the evolution of things.”
Elizabeth, whose revealing turn as the Czech exchange student Nadia earned her a nomination for Breakthrough Female Performance at the MTV Movie Awards and several Maxim covers, attempted to host a live chat session with fans only to crash the site’s servers. And now, a quarter century later, the actress and animal rights activist throttled the internet once more by launching an OnlyFans in April, raking in millions during her first few months on the platform.
“I crossed $1 million in nine days,” she shares. “It was really surprising, and I was honored that my fans came out and supported me. I had no idea what to expect, and the response has been really amazing. I’m chatting with people all the time and it’s been a lot of fun.”
The “Scary Movie” star, 52, has joined a number of other renowned actors and musicians who have taken their talents to the paid-content site, such as Bella Thorne, Denise Richards, Cardi B, Iggy Azalea and “Sopranos” actress Drea de Matteo, who had only $10 in her bank account and used her OnlyFans earnings to prevent her house from going into foreclosure, later declaring, “OnlyFans saved my life.”
“There are a bunch of actors that have recently gotten on and we’re starting to pull it back to what it was meant to be,” offers Elizabeth. “It doesn’t have to be only for adult entertainment. It can be whatever you want it to be.”
There is also the case of 85-year-old “Knots Landing” star Donna Mills, who joined OnlyFans last month and has been making a killing. Both Mills and Elizabeth are being managed by Joseph D. Reitman, a journeyman actor and producer who also happens to be Elizabeth’s ex-husband.
“Shannon has always been someone who genuinely enjoys connecting with and giving back to her fans, and this allows her to do that in a more direct, meaningful way than ever before. It’s a powerful model, and right now, there’s nothing more effective at facilitating that connection than OnlyFans,” Reitman told Variety.
OnlyFans was initially founded in 2016 as a Patreon-esque subscription service wherein celebrities would be paid directly by their fans in exchange for access, and it banned any and all explicit content. That ban was lifted in 2017; and by 2019, when cam site owner Leonid Radvinsky acquired a majority interest in the company, it had become primarily known as a destination for adult creators and pornographic content. The site exploded in popularity at the height of the Covid pandemic and the corresponding economic recession, growing from 20 million to 120 million users. Today, OnlyFans boasts over 400 million users worldwide as well as approximately 4 million content creators who’ve earned more than $25 billion since its inception. OnlyFans takes a 20% commission while its creators keep the remaining 80%.
Like de Matteo, OnlyFans has helped Elizabeth dig herself out of a financial rut. She’d recently filed for divorce from her husband of five years, Simon Borchert; Hollywood residuals ain’t what they used to be; and the acting roles had dried up due to a mix of her primarily living in South Africa — where she runs her non-profit animal rescue organization Animal Avengers — and old-school Hollywood ageism. Elizabeth has always enjoyed visiting fan conventions like Comic-Con and interacting with her admirers, so it seemed like an extension of that.
“I was going through a divorce here in South Africa and was chatting to my manager Joe about what’s next and how to restart things in my life. I had really neglected a lot of things, and he brought it up as an option. I wasn’t sure and didn’t know much about it, and we looked into it, and I thought, ‘Yeah, why not?’” explains Elizabeth.
She continues, “For the last ten years I’ve been living off of my savings for the most part because I haven’t been as focused on work. To be able to get myself back to the point where I’m not struggling and am able to choose projects because I like them and not because I need the money — it’s definitely giving me more freedom to do that.”
Animal Avengers was started as an L.A. dog and cat rescue in 2001, right after Elizabeth’s one-two punch of “American Pie” and “Scary Movie.” After observing a harrowing video of an elephant being poached in South Africa, she realized she “wanted to help animals on a bigger scale” and started exploring animal rights efforts in the country, eventually moving there in 2016. She was also appalled by photos of Donald Trump’s sons trophy hunting endangered animals that resurfaced during his first presidential campaign.
“It’s horrific,” she says, adding, “And there’s a big difference between hunting to use all of the animal and feed your village versus trophy hunting, which usually involves endangered animals and they just want the trophy. To me, there’s a mental imbalance there to want to do that to an animal at all.”
Currently, Animal Avengers supports anti-poaching efforts, including programs that help rangers buy supplies, tag animals, do rhino-horn trimmings (to inhibit their poaching) and has a sanctuary on a leased piece of land where they care for a blind black rhino named Manute. She says she’s looking to acquire their own piece of land in or around Cape Town to erect an animal rehabilitation center and wildlife hospital.
And a good portion of Elizabeth’s OnlyFans earnings gets poured back into Animal Avengers.
“So much of what I do goes back to the animals. There are a lot of expenses that go into it, and I don’t charge a salary for myself or charge travel I do for charity work to the charity. I’ll pay for that myself,” she maintains. “It allows me to cover admin expenses so that all of the charity’s money goes to animals in the field.”
Elizabeth’s first foray into acting came during her senior year of high school in Waco, Texas, when she landed the role of a cheerleader extra in the music video for the 1990 song “I Just Can’t Handle It” by the local R&B group Hi-Five. That video was helmed by a little-known director by the name of Antoine Fuqua (the man behind the $1 billion-grossing Michael Jackson biopic “Michael”) and produced by Robert Goodman, who encouraged her to get into modeling, which she did nine days after graduating high school. She modeled in Japan, China and Taiwan, before venturing out to L.A. and booking a Sunkist commercial. Then she booked another commercial. She took acting classes, signed with a small agency and landed a small role on the HBO show “Arliss,” playing a Russian tennis player with an accent. Then came the low-budget horror film, “Jack Frost,” followed shortly thereafter by “American Pie.”
“American Pie,” which turns 25 this year, has experienced a cultural reassessment in recent years — particularly the sequence where Elizabeth’s character Nadia is broadcast online disrobing and pleasuring herself without her consent.
“With the whole #MeToo movement, everyone is scared to say anything now or do anything, and comedy is always going to offend somebody, so it’s just a different day and age,” she reasons. “But I think it will all come back around at some point. People are yearning for connection. I love ‘American Pie.’ It meant a lot for my life and my career. I don’t go back and analyze it content-wise, and it made everything for me. I don’t have anything bad to say about it.”
After the success of “American Pie,” which grossed over $235 million against an $11 million budget, Elizabeth signed a three-picture deal with Miramax, which put her in the crosshairs of notorious brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein.
“We did have some run-ins with Harvey, but my manager and my ex, Joe, were both very protective of me,” remembers Elizabeth. “So, when occasions arose that could have gone very wrong, they didn’t allow it to happen. If I was invited to meet Harvey somewhere, they would say no.”
Perhaps that — and a miscommunication over whether Elizabeth would pose in a men’s magazine to promote “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” — is why Elizabeth fell out of favor with Weinstein, a convicted rapist known for holding actresses’ careers hostage if they turned down his advances.
“Harvey did threaten my career,” Elizabeth alleges, claiming he told her representation something to the effect of, “Lose my number. Don’t ever call me again about her or I’ll end her career.”
Elizabeth’s three-picture deal with Miramax subsequently ended after only two films, and she also says that is the reason why she never returned for future entries in the “Scary Movie” franchise: “I think there’s a definite reason they didn’t [bring me back].”
Whether due to Weinstein’s machinations or not, Elizabeth’s acting career began to lose steam not long after he turned on her. She dabbled in professional poker for a handful of years in the mid-aughts, mostly raising money for her non-profit, and was coached by poker legend Annie Duke — Reitman’s wife at the time, who’d also taught poker to Matt Damon and Ben Affleck — but “it wasn’t my calling.” Post-divorce, she says she’s ready to dive back into acting and producing, and even applied for a South African visa so she can work on film and television projects out there as well.
“I’m signing on to produce a project and be in it, and we’re looking at a few others that are coming to us,” Elizabeth reveals. “It’s exciting to be back in the game, in that sense. And I really want to direct and be behind the camera.”
In the meantime, she’s busy directing and producing her OnlyFans content, which does not currently contain any nudity, even though many of Elizabeth’s posts entice fans of hers to purchase images that appear to be nude, only to reveal her clothed:
That may change, however.
“I’ve got to be a little bit mysterious,” she teases. “I do all kinds of content, but I don’t even know what my boundaries will be. I’m still exploring it and as I become more comfortable with it, I’m going to push those boundaries.”
