Bella Thorne

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Bella Thorne is an American actress, singer and writer who, in August 2020, joined the subscription platform OnlyFans and had earned one million dollars within twenty-four hours. Nobody had reached that figure so fast on the site before her. By the end of the first week her earnings had doubled to two million dollars.

  A decade earlier she had been a Disney Channel sitcom star, playing a dancer with big ambitions. Between those two moments lie child acting jobs, a pop career that she stopped and restarted, a run of horror films, and a very public break with her old image.

  How did a girl from a struggling Florida family end up setting records online? What did she gain from leaving the family-friendly world, and what did it cost her? And why do so many chapters of her story circle back to who gets to control her image?

  7377

• 2. Hardship and Dyslexia

  ›

  Pembroke Pines, Florida, is where Annabella Avery Thorne was born on the 8th of October 1997. Her parents were Tamara Thorne and Delancey Reinaldo Thorne, known as Rey, and her father was of Cuban descent. Three of her siblings also became actors.

  In April 2007 her father died in a traffic accident. Thorne has said her mother was left supporting four children, that the family was very poor, and that she began working as a child actress to help pay the bills.

  In September 2017 she shared more about those years. She grew up in a suburban area and spoke Spanish as her first language. School was painful, because she was bullied for being dyslexic.

  The diagnosis had come in first grade. After a public school where the bullying happened, she was home-schooled. A Sylvan Learning center made the difference, and she began reading and writing a grade ahead of her age.

  By April 2010 she was saying she had overcome dyslexia through sheer effort, reading everything she could find, down to the labels on cereal boxes. Her first appearance on screen had come years earlier, in 2003, in a film where she was not even credited.

  79101213

• 3. Small Parts and First Breaks

  ›

  In the comedy Stuck on You, Thorne played a fan on the sidelines, a bit part without a credit. Television came next in small doses. She appeared in Entourage, and in The O.C. she played a younger version of the character Taylor Townsend.

  The first major television role arrived in 2007, when she joined the recurring cast of Dirty Sexy Money for its second season. She played Margaux Darling. The series follows Nick George, a lawyer and family man who takes over as counsel to the wealthy Darling family after his father dies in a mysterious plane crash. Nick also hopes to learn who was behind the death.

  Next came My Own Worst Enemy, a short-lived drama that put her opposite Christian Slater and Taylor Lautner. As Ruthy Spivey she won a Young Artist Award. Thorne called it a major breakthrough, because it was the first recurring role of her career.

  On October Road she played Angela Ferilli, the pre-adolescent crush of the main characters, in the third-last episode of the series. Her older brother Remy appeared in the same episode as a younger Eddie Latekka.

  In 2009 she played Wendy, one of Adrian Monk's classmates, in the web series Little Monk. Those webisodes survive only on the Best of Monk DVD. That year she also played the vengeful antagonist of the horror film Forget Me Not.

  She took a supporting role in the family drama Raspberry Magic as well. It premiered in 2010 at the Cinequest Film Festival and at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival.

  191718

• 4. Shake It Up

  ›

  Season 4 of the HBO drama Big Love brought Thorne a new part in 2010. She replaced Jolean Wejbe as Tancy, nicknamed Teenie, the younger daughter of Bill and Barb Henrickson.

  The larger change that year was a Disney Channel sitcom first titled Dance, Dance Chicago and released as Shake It Up. Thorne played CeCe Jones, a dancer who dreams of a career in the spotlight and who also has dyslexia. It was a buddy comedy about two friends on a local teen dance show, a show within a show. Zendaya played the other half of the pair.

  Production began in Hollywood, California, in July 2010. The series premiered on the 7th of November 2010.

  Thorne had worked steadily in television and film, yet she had never danced professionally. She signed on in October 2009, and from then on she took three dance classes every night.

  On the 29th of September 2011, Disney Channel raised the second-season order to 26 episodes. A 90-minute special called Made In Japan aired on the 17th of August 2012 as the season two finale. Disney announced a third season on the 4th of June 2012. That same year Thorne played Avalon Greene in the Disney Channel Original Movie Frenemies. Her work on the series earned several awards and nominations, among them an Imagen Award.

  On the 25th of July 2013, Disney Channel confirmed that the show would end after its third season. Thorne already had a second career underway in music.

  1922232429

• 5. Music and Books

  ›

  Her first single, "Watch Me," was released on the 21st of June 2011. It reached 86 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and 9 on the US Top Heatseekers chart, and it earned an RIAA Gold certification.

  An EP called Made in Japan followed in 2012. Her single "TTYLXOX," released on the 6th of March, reached 97 on the Hot 100. On the 30th of March 2013, Hollywood Records confirmed on Twitter that she had signed with the label.

  On the 23rd of April 2013, Thorne announced a debut album of eleven songs. She told fans to expect something unlike anyone else, because she did not want to be an artist people knew from a single song. In her words, "All my songs are very different from each other. So I don't want to be known as only one genre." She named Britney Spears, Kesha and Destiny's Child as influences.

  On the 15th of October 2014, she announced the album was canceled. She said she was unhappy with the "auto-tuned bad music" she had in the works. A month later, on the 17th of November, she released the EP Jersey instead. Its lead single, "Call It Whatever," entered the Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs chart at number forty-seven. It climbed to number ten and stayed on the chart for ten weeks.

  Books ran alongside the music. In 2013 it was reported that she had signed a deal for a series of books, and in 2014 she wrote Autumn Falls. It opened a trilogy of young adult novels, continued by Autumn's Kiss in 2015 and Autumn's Wish in 2016. They follow a teenage girl who gets through adolescence with the help of a diary that may have supernatural links.

  In July 2019, Rare Bird Books published The Life of a Wannabe Mogul: Mental Disarray Vol. 1, a collection of her autobiographical poetry.

  Music returned in 2018. She contributed five songs to the soundtrack of the film Midnight Sun, including the lead single "Burn So Bright" and the fan favorite "Walk With Me." That April, at the Coachella festival, she announced her own record label, Filthy Fangs. In August a partnership with Epic/Sony came to light, and she began work on a debut studio album titled What Do You See Now?

  2021262742

• 6. Slashers and Thrillers

  ›

  Adam Sandler's character in the 2014 comedy Blended had a daughter, and Thorne played her. That year she also appeared in Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. In The DUFF, released in 2015, she played a high school antagonist again.

  For the MTV series Scream, a television adaptation of the slasher film franchise, she was offered the lead. She turned it down in favor of Nina, a role she judged would be more iconic. She described Nina as "mean, terrible."

  On the 30th of July 2014, she was cast in an episode of the fifteenth season of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. The episode, "The Book of Shadows," aired on the 19th of October 2014. She also played Cammy Cahill in Mostly Ghostly: Have You Met My Ghoulfriend, a sequel to a 2008 film.

  In 2015 she voiced the Frog Princess in the American dub of the animated film The Frog Kingdom. She also played Kate in Shovel Buddies, Jamie in Keep Watching, and Ashley, a young and famous singer, in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip.

  In 2016 she played Rain in Tyler Perry's Boo! A Madea Halloween. In 2017 she returned to television in Famous in Love on Freeform, as Paige Townsen, a college student who gets her big break by auditioning for the lead in a Hollywood blockbuster. The role brought nominations from the Teen Choice Awards.

  The Netflix film You Get Me came that year as well. In October 2017 she appeared in The Babysitter, a slasher comedy directed by McG and released directly to Netflix. She returned for the sequel, The Babysitter: Killer Queen. She had also joined the cast of the black comedy Assassination Nation in March 2017, though it reached theaters only on the 21st of September 2018.

  Midnight Sun, a romantic drama based on a 2006 Japanese film, was released on the 23rd of March 2018.

  In 2020 she competed on the third season of The Masked Singer as the character Swan. She was eliminated on her second appearance, and she used the moment to remind judge Ken Jeong that they had worked together on The DUFF.

  The heist thriller Infamous, with Jake Manley, was released on the 12th of June 2020. Critic Nick Allen wrote that she had "the classically great presence of someone like Sandra Bullock, but with her own scraggly edge... Thorne dominates numerous scenes that catapult her character from clout-hungry wannabe to gun-selfie superstar."

  In November 2020 she starred in the thriller Girl, directed by Chad Faust. The film drew mixed reviews, though critics singled out her work as her best to date. That month she also appeared in the action comedy Chick Fight, directed by Paul Leyden, with Malin Akerman and Alec Baldwin.

  In 2021 she played Lily in the first season of Paradise City on Amazon Prime Video. She also took roles in Masquerade and Time Is Up. She starred in Habit, directed by Janell Shirtcliff, and served as an executive producer on it. Measure of Revenge, directed by Jordan Galland, put her opposite Melissa Leo. The Trainer was directed by Tony Kaye.

  3537474865

• 7. Adult Platforms

  ›

  In August 2019, the site Pornhub announced that Thorne would make her directorial debut on its network. The film was Her & Him, and it was screened at the Oldenburg Film Festival from the 11th to the 20th of September 2019.

  Critics reviewed it positively. In November 2019, at the second annual PornHub Awards in Los Angeles, she won a Vision Award for it. In her acceptance speech she revealed a partnership with the company to change how its flagging algorithm works.

  Pay-per-view photos priced at 200 dollars drew the controversy that followed her OnlyFans debut. She had described them as naked, but they showed her in lingerie, and a wave of chargebacks followed.

  OnlyFans then introduced site-wide restrictions that limited what creators could charge and reduced payouts from weekly to monthly. The company denied the changes were connected to Thorne.

  She said she had opened the account as research for a role in an upcoming film with director Sean Baker, and Baker denied this. She also said the money would fund her production company, with some going to worthy charities.

  By 2021 she was the second highest earning creator on the platform, at 11 million dollars a month.

  5960737476

• 8. Public Image and Speaking Out

  ›

  The BBC named Thorne one of its 100 Women of 2019, even as she was widely seen as a controversial figure. Looking back at her Disney years, she said she felt restricted and that "I wish I would have been true to myself."

  She went on to say, "After Disney, I had the opportunity to find my true self and that is reflected in all my work from acting, producing, directing, and writing. I have more artistic freedom to continue to express myself."

  The commercial side of her career is long. She has appeared in more than 30 commercials, including ones for Neutrogena and Texas Instruments. Advertising campaigns include Guess Jeans, Tommy Hilfiger, J.Lo Girls, Candie's, Ralph Lauren, Gap and Diesel.

  Her magazine covers include Shape, Seventeen, Teen Vogue, Latina and Gay Times in the US, and Company in the UK. They also include Marie Claire and CosmoGirl in Indonesia, Elle in Canada, and Glamour and GQ in Mexico. She has also appeared in music videos for Liam Payne, Bhad Bhabie, Logan Paul and Oliver Tree.

  In January 2018 she wrote on Instagram that she had been physically and sexually abused as a child, "from the day I can remember till I was 14." In 2019 she told Juju Chang of ABC News that it began when she was six. She did not name her alleged abuser, saying only that he was "someone I was raised with." She has voiced support for the Time's Up organization, which works to prevent such abuse.

  In June 2019, hackers stole nude photos of her and threatened extortion. She answered by releasing the photographs herself. Later that year she spoke out about pornographic deepfakes.

  Her charitable causes include the Humane Society, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and The Nomad Organization, which provides education, food and medical supplies to children in Africa. She joined PETA in urging a boycott of SeaWorld, and she acknowledged that she had appeared in a commercial for the park as a child.

  Her personal life has also been public. After her breakup with actor Gregg Sulkin in August 2016, she came out as bisexual, and in 2019 she came out as pansexual. She announced an engagement to Italian singer Benjamin Mascolo in March 2021, and the couple split in June 2022. In May 2023 she announced her engagement to entrepreneur Mark Emms, a producer of Bad Vegan.

  8182909189