Jessie Cave smiling, wearing round green glasses and a floral top with long blonde hair at a film premiere.
DANIEL LEAL / AFP via Getty Images

She Was in the ‘Harry Potter’ Films, Now She Makes More Brushing Her Hair on OnlyFans Than She Did in 18 Years of Acting

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She joined the site to feed her four kids, and she keeps her clothes on the whole time. The men paying her are into an actual fetish for hair.

Jessie Cave has never appeared nude on OnlyFans. Her videos mostly show her brushing and showing off her long hair, which turned out to serve a fetish she’d never heard of until subscribers explained it.

Jessie Cave and Harry Potter cast members posing together at a Harrods promotional event in London in 2011
Jessie Cave joins Harry Potter co-stars Mark Williams, James Phelps, Oliver Phelps, and Warwick Davis at a Harrods event celebrating the Deathly Hallows Part 2 DVD release in London, December 2011. Photo by Leon Neal / AFP via Getty Images.

“It was only after I started that I realized that it’s an actual, official fetish, and it’s called ‘trichophilia,’ which is when somebody is aroused by hair,” she told The Observer. “At its heart, it’s about feeling like you’re talking to somebody and having a little bit of a connection.”

Cave, 39, played Gryffindor student Lavender Brown in three of the eight “Harry Potter” films. She announced she’d joined OnlyFans in March 2025, a mom of four who says she did it out of necessity, not empowerment. “It’s just a job, at the end of the day,” she said.

On Substack last year she wrote that she felt a “sense of shame” over signing up, because she had “nothing to show for 18 years of work in the arts industry.” The account has since made her more money than her acting career.

The stigma has cost her, too. In September she wrote that she was barred from a recent “Harry Potter” fan convention, income she’d previously relied on, over her OnlyFans presence.

Young woman with curly auburn hair and a green bow, wearing a floral dress and green cardigan on a red carpet.
At Vue West End in London on Dec. 2, 2009, a younger Jessie Cave — curly-haired and wearing a green bow — walked the red carpet for the UK premiere of ‘Where the Wild Things Are.’ Photo by Ian Gavan / Getty Images.

“They explained it was because it’s a ‘family show and OnlyFans is affiliated with porn,'” she wrote, per Collider and The Hollywood Reporter. “This was baffling to me, as some actors who do conventions (most actors, actually) have done TV and films in which they’ve done sex scenes and nudity. I’m just playing with my hair!”

She films in stolen windows. “I basically sneak away whenever I can, or when they’re at school, and I do as much content as I can within 22 minutes,” she told The Observer.

Chris Belcher, an associate professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Southern California, says the story raises more questions about society than about Cave. “We could be asking more important questions about why it’s difficult for a mom of four to afford to feed her family, than whether it’s wrong that she brushes her hair for men who enjoy seeing it on the internet.”

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