How do you top a run like the one Shannon Elizabeth had in the late 1990s and early 2000s? In just a few short years, she cemented herself as an inescapable multiplex mainstay. Audiences flocked to see her in the American Pie series, the irreverent Scary Movie, Kevin Smith’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and the cult classic Thirteen Ghosts. 

And they still can’t get enough. Early receipts show that the millennial It Girls’ April OnlyFans debut netted seven figures, a number she downplays as a “little bit exaggerated.”  In fact, Elizabeth seems to quibble with quite a bit of the coverage surrounding her debut on the platform. Though initial coverage said she had joined OnlyFans to wrest back power after Hollywood “controlled the narrative” of her career, she claims she “actually didn’t say that.” 

Control of her own image is part of the OnlyFans allure. She’s among a growing list of famous faces — Denise Richards, Drea de Matteo — who’ve explored the platform as an alternative, and complementary, avenue to mainstream Hollywood. Her manager, Joseph Reitman, first floated the idea of a page on the site in November, following her divorce from her husband Simon Boachert. With it, she could better manage her relationship with her fans, any of whom would approach her at Cons and repeat some of her most famous lines to her verbatim. 

Her headline-grabbing move stands in stark contrast to her past nine years, which she’s spent running her animal welfare-focused Shannon Elizabeth Foundation, eschewing Hollywood and its dolled-up glossy sheen in exchange for a calling “she could no longer ignore,” as she wrote on the foundation’s website. 

But she’s also felt a calling to go beyond acting. Though she has an undeniable gift for comedic timing, Elizabeth has used the platform as a way to explore writing, producing, directing and distributing the final product. Just don’t come to her page assuming she’s there for nudity. 

“I don’t know what my boundaries are going to be,” she told Playboy. “I’m exploring it as I go.” She added, “I don’t even know what my boundaries are going to be at this point in time. So, we’ll see as we go.” 

In an Zoom interview with Playboy from her home in South Africa, she explained how her divorce created the space to talk about this new venture, her directorial ambitions and why OnlyFans is not the future. 

You said that you joined OnlyFans as a way to take back power after other people “controlled the narrative” and the outcome of your Hollywood career. 

I’m gonna stop you there. I actually didn’t say that. 

You didn’t? 

I knew you were gonna ask that. There’s two quotes out there that I never said, and that’s one of them. 

[Playboy has reached out to People for comment.]

So you’re correcting the record? 

Yeah, absolutely. It wasn’t about that at all. I was going through a divorce. My manager approached me. I was working on a film in Canada, and we chatted about what’s next, and he put this out there as an option. And partially because he knows how much I have absolutely loved meeting fans at, like, Comic-Con type events and signings. It’s during those interactions that I’ve really started to take in what some of my films have meant to people. When you’re in the process of doing the films, you just don’t know. You make a film, you do press, you move on. You don’t know how it affects people. 

Now I’ve had so many people come up to me and cry or tell me what a movie meant to them or quote my movies, quote my lines to me. I start crying sometimes. It’s just so touching and amazing. I had no idea that the work that I was doing affected anyone in that way. When he approached me with this, it was like, “Well, this is another way that you can have that one-on-one with your fans.”

When American Pie came out, we built a website for me. It was probably the first website that an actor had. Actors didn’t have websites. We were trying to create a way that I could chat to people. We had a fan club you could join. It was very similar and it was all set up for fans. But the technology wasn’t there yet. It was still so new; what was possible then and what’s possible now are very different. This is a very modern way of doing what we were trying to do back then. That’s what I love, is that I can have those interactions with people one-on-one and I can share the behind the scenes of my life in a way that I haven’t done before. 

You were labeled a sex symbol very early on in your career, in the late 90s, early 2000s. Did you agree or disagree with having that label put on you? How did it make you feel? 

I didn’t think about it in terms of “I agree” or “I disagree,” to be honest. You know, I did layouts for Maxim and other sexy men’s magazines. I’m not one of these where it’s like you say I’m sexy and I’m offended by that. I think it’s very sweet and everybody wants to be treated or looked at in a way that’s flattering. 

It just kind of is what it is. The first role I played kind of set the stage and at that point in my career I was just happy to have a job. I was so excited to get the role of Nadia and to be in a studio film and I was just happy to be working. That’s really as deep as I thought about it. 

Looking at it now, maybe 26 years later, do you think that that limited you at all, the way that people consumed you as an actor? 

I think a lot of actors get pigeonholed into whatever their last project was that was big and successful. That’s a very common thing. You play a professor and they’re like, “Oh I’ve got this role for a professor. They’re perfect!” Because you just saw them play a professor! You don’t have an imagination!  

I just want to make people laugh. I love making people laugh and I love being self-deprecating. I’m always looking for projects that I can do that in. It’s just normal for any actor to kind of go through different stages of life. There was definitely a period of time where it was like, “Well I kind of just need to work,” and a lot of actors go through that. I’ve worked with people who are like, “I’ve got three ex-wives and 10 kids so I got to work.” 

When your manager brought OnlyFans up to you in November, what were your first reactions? Did you start learning about it? 

We started trying to look up anyone we knew that was on there. We looked behind the scenes at some of the free pages we could find. I realized that everyone’s got a very different page and everyone uses it in whatever way works for them. I knew that Denise Richards was on there and I could look up her page. And so as an actress, it’s a great way to connect with your fans. 

I know Denise, so I called her and chatted with her about it. She gave me a lot of advice, and she helped me get to this place, for sure. But other people might use it for something else. I understand that some people think that it’s only an adult entertainment site, but it’s not. Adult entertainers use the site. And they probably all set up their pages differently, whatever works for them. But I don’t think it was created for that. That just kind of worked for them. It got labeled as that somewhere along the way. But I know a lot of actresses that are getting on it now. It’s just one of those things where everyone must do them and create your page the way you want to. 

It’s not only adult content for sure and I remember when it first started, the idea was supposed to be giving fans access to their favorite celebrities.  Related to that, I saw you talk about your own relationship with nudity and how you’re usually more covered up than some of your friends. Even if you’re not doing strictly adult content all the time, did you have to address, emotionally or psychologically, your relationship with nudity before deciding to go on the platform? 

Well, you said that assuming I am doing adult content on there. And I’ve never said that’s what I’m doing. 

I’m happy to be corrected on that. 

I don’t know what my boundaries are going to be. I’m exploring it as I go. And I’m starting out slow and I’m building up as I get more used to doing content. And it’s all very new. I’ve only been doing it for like three weeks. So as I’m getting used to the platform, as I see what people are actually wanting and requesting and how it’s going, I don’t even know what my boundaries are going to be at this point in time. So, we’ll see as we go. 

OnlyFans allows you to set boundaries on what you create, produce and distribute. What has that creative process, and feeling out those boundaries, been like for you? 

It’s helped me to start to feel sexy again, because for a long time, especially being over here, I was so engrossed in just being out in the bush, working with animals, not putting on makeup, not fixing my hair, not taking care of my skin, — very opposite of if I was living in Hollywood.

I don’t know when was the last time I put on makeup. I don’t know when I fixed my hair last. I just wasn’t paying any attention to it. Between that and just getting older, I wasn’t feeling sexy anymore. I wasn’t feeling attractive in any way. Going through this process of getting fixed up and taking photos and seeing what I like and what I don’t like as I’m posing. The whole process has just been like finding myself again. It’s like, “Oh, I feel sexier! I want to wear something sexier! I want to pose sexier!” I’m finding my own femininity again, which I think I neglected. 

You had mentioned that a lot of the conversations around OnlyFans started right after your divorce. Was that just a coincidence of time, or did you really feel like post divorce, you were ready for this, for this new chapter? 

I don’t know if my manager and I would have had the same conversation if it was kind of status quo, and I was just going to do this film and come back to South Africa. But now that I’ve gone through a divorce, it feels like a next chapter for me. It feels like a fresh start, and I needed to just find a way to rebuild myself. I don’t know if the conversation would have happened without that. I feel like it is somewhat related in that sense. 

Culturally, it feels like we’re looking back at the way that women were treated in the early 2000s, with documentaries about Pameal Anderson, Anna Nicole Smith and Britney Spears. Do you think OnlyFans is an avenue more actresses might go down to take back control of their own image?

It’s great in the sense that you get to be your own director, producer, writer. A lot of actresses, they only get to act, but we all are creators. We’re all artists. We want to do more. Most actors want to direct or produce. They want to write. This gives you that opportunity to do all of that yourself. And you get to put out the final product. It almost makes me scared to go back to doing a film where I don’t get to put out the final product and say, “Oh, but I want to change that!”  

The early reports were that you made $1.2 million in your first week. What was it like to hear that number and know that so many people wanted to connect with you? 

It is a little bit exaggerated that number, but it’s not too far off. I had no idea if anybody would even come to the site, to my page. I had no idea if anyone would care. I’ve been really overwhelmed by the response and just humbled. I can’t believe that there’s that many people that want to see what I’m doing. 

I was kind of the girl that when it came to social, I’m like, “Nobody cares what I’m eating. I’m not going to take a picture of this and put it on Instagram.” I’ve been really shocked by the response and so excited and so grateful to the fans, that they’re there and they still care, and they want to see more and they want to interact with me. I’m just really grateful to all of the fans. I just had no idea. 

You’ve mentioned that you want to venture into more directing and producing and not just acting. What type of films are you interested in making and what kind of director is Shannon Elizabeth? What are your influences? 

There’s been a couple of projects on my radar for a while. One is a coming-of-age film that I just really love. I think it would be so amazing. Where I think I would shine the most is working with the actors, because I know what it’s like to be on that other side. I know that I would surround myself with a really experienced team and really great cameramen and like first ADs. Like that’s where I would need the most support. I might have the vision of what I want for a shot, but I certainly don’t know how to get that, so I need to be able to sit with them and say, “Here’s my wish list of what I’d like for this shot. Can you do it?,” “What kind of lens package do you need? Do we have that?”

I directed a music video back in the day and I worked with one of the DPs on American Pie. I found out really quickly — because we didn’t have a big budget — I had all these ideas of what I wanted. He was  like, “Well, I have no way of doing that. I just don’t have the lenses here. We don’t have the budget for it.” I’m like, “Oh shoot, we’ve got to get creative now.” 

I’ve always collected these shots in my head. When I watch things, I’m like, “Oh, I love that angle! That’s a cool angle.” I like things that are very unconventional, that are not the basic, you know, like wide shot, close up, close up, move on. Like I really love different shots. That’s where I want to play and be creative and have fun. I really want to do some comedies. I want to direct some comedies and direct some actors. Maybe it’s the next generation, the new generation of American Pie actors.