‘Sopranos’ star Drea de Matteo says walking away from Hollywood was easy

'I don't mingle with famous people. I don't, it's just not my world'

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Published Oct 15, 2024  •  2 minute read

Drea de Matteo Photo by Carlo Allegri /Getty Images

After being ostracized by her Hollywood peers and losing acting jobs for refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine, Sopranos star Drea de Matteo says walking away from Hollywood was easy because she “never played the celebrity game.” 

“You know, a lot of people ask me about getting cancelled or getting kicked out of Hollywood or shunned. That never happened to me,” she explained in a new interview with Fox News. “I wasn’t in there to begin with. I’ve never been a Hollywood player. I’ve done a few acting parts of it on a few TV shows. I’ve done a good job. I even have, you know, some achievement awards and things. But like, I was never really in the industry.”

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De Matteo, 52, told the Daily Mail earlier this year she was down to her last $10 and was close to losing her home before she made the decision to join the adults-only subscription site OnlyFans.

The Emmy-winning actress, who lost work over her refusal to get the COVID jab, said she didn’t want to join the site but added that she was out of options after the bank threatened to take her home.

“It saved us,” she admitted. “OnlyFans saved my life, 100%. I can’t believe I’m saying that, but it really did save us.”

De Matteo decided to join OnlyFans as a way to help re-establish her financial footing.

For $15 per month, subscribers get access to uncensored shots of the mother of two who played Adriana, the girlfriend of Michael Imperioli’s Christopher Moltisanti, for six seasons on The Sopranos.

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“I wasn’t going to sit around and wait for my manager or for somebody to try and land me a job that I needed to get in order to take care of what needed to be taken care of. I was losing my home,” she said.

The cash she earned from OnlyFans has also allowed de Matteo to expand her business interests into fashion, with her newly launched ULTRAFREE brand and a new jewelry collection.

“I don’t own fancy purses and s*** like that or walk red carpets. I don’t mingle with famous people. I don’t, it’s just not my world. So, for me to walk away from it, not a big deal,” she told Fox News.

Drea de Matteo attends the world premiere of two new episodes of HBO’s “The Sopranos” on March 27, 2007, at Radio City Music Hall in New York . Photo by STEPHEN CHERNIN /AP

Elsewhere in her chat with Fox, de Matteo spoke out on the new documentary Wise Guy: David Chase and the Sopranos, telling the outlet that the filmmakers “had the opportunity to write (the late James Gandolfini) a love song. Why not? He was the hero of the network. He did more wonderful things than the missteps that they needed to highlight.”

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She continued by saying Gandolfini was “a hard worker.”

“Did he blow off some steam? Sure, he did. I think we all know how to blow off some steam. But to capitalize on that, to tell a story about The Sopranos, to make him look like Tony Soprano, this man was nothing like Tony Soprano. Nothing. And, you know, because he was such an incredible actor, he lived in that headspace.”

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