It would be easy to criticize Dawn O’Porter for being tone-deaf by pleading poverty while married to Hollywood star Chris O’Dowd — a man worth millions thanks to roles in huge movies like Bridesmaids.
“I work paycheck to paycheck,” O’Porter, 46, revealed on the Friday, July 25, episode of the “White Wine Question Time” podcast. “I’m always broke.”
O’Porter, with her half a million Instagram followers, glossy bob and enviable boho wardrobe, might not look “broke” to Us, but she’s a high-profile example of a certain breed of cool, creative women who talk like living precariously is a flex.
Relatable, sure — but also complicated. When “being broke” comes from someone who can talk about it on a celebrity podcast, it lands differently than when you’re working in a hospital or grocery store — or nowhere at all — and truly wondering how to pay rent.
O’Porter was a familiar face in 2000s British media — a columnist, TV presenter, author. We’re not talking The View money here; it was the kind of work that kept a 20-something in vintage tea dresses, flicky eyeliner and the occasional bougie dinner, not private jets and sprawling mansions.
Then came O’Dowd. They met at O’Porter’s 30th birthday in 2009, just as her TV career was fading and she was struggling to find work in L.A, where she’d recently moved. “My TV career had just gone,” she said. “I was so poor. I was so upset. I had zero confidence. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I’d just met Chris, and he was on this trajectory up. I thought, well maybe this is just it. I’m just a girlfriend, and that’s it.”
She also told The Guardian in 2022, “The first year I lived in L.A was hard. I didn’t know many people … I met Chris a year later and it all got easier. He’d just done Bridesmaids, so we were finally living the L.A life I had imagined.”
But celebrity proximity is expensive. Things are normalized that are out of reach for regular folk: think designer clothes, constant eating out, nannies, five-star hotels, insane beauty standards, first class travel, maybe even paying for Spotify Premium — and none of that is O’Porter’s style: she’s more of a vintage-loving, cat lady, English rose type.
So, after a few years in West Hollywood (their house went on the market for $1.8 million in 2020), they moved back to the U.K. with their sons, Art, 11, and Valentine, 8. “I’ve never seen myself as a celebrity, ever, even though I’m married to Chris who is quite a well-known actor,” O’Porter said on the podcast. “I guess if I was a celebrity, I’d get paid lots of money to do things that aren’t necessarily my job or don’t really feed what I do, but I don’t. My job is writing, with the occasional Instagram ad to pay the rent.”
If you work in the creative industries, O’Porter’s story will sound familiar. There’s glamour on the outside — book launches, panel gigs, glossy collabs — but the money is erratic. Some years are great, some are, as she put it, an “absolute disaster.” A card declined one week, a bestseller the next.
This instability isn’t unique to O’Porter — but most of us aren’t married to Hollywood stars. And for women in particular, the financial conversation gets thornier. We’re proudly independent, yet many of us grew up watching dads earn the money and moms work part-time or not at all. That inheritance seeps in: we want equality, but quietly expect men to “handle” the finances and other boring stuff.
O’Porter’s childhood was actually less traditional than this — her parents split when she was a baby, and so, when her mom tragically died of breast cancer when the star was just 6 years old, she was brought up by her extended family. With all that to contend with, financial literacy probably wasn’t a priority, but it’s so often the case for women with more stable childhoods too.
Ultimately, we don’t know how O’Porter and O’Dowd manage their finances: they might have proudly merged their names when they got married, but what they did with their bank accounts is private. Every couple does it differently, and it can lead to some fraught discussions between girlfriends, which is why O’Porter was bold to go there on a podcast. Some couples pool every penny. Some contribute a percentage to the household pot and keep the rest. Others keep things separate — even with huge income gaps. And sometimes, there’s a breadwinner who pays their partner a spending allowance.
In O’Porter and O’Dowd’s case, it’s clear who earns more — and she knows it. Which is partly why her confession about living “paycheck to paycheck” feels so fraught and potentially galling: is it genuine relatability, or is it flaunting the freedom to be bad with money because someone else can pick up the tab?
O’Porter’s comments are refreshing in one sense — a reminder that fame doesn’t guarantee fortune. But they also expose something uncomfortable: how many of us, especially women, are financially unprepared. We laugh off declined cards and “oops!” overdrafts, but ignore the real risks — divorce, layoffs, illness — that can turn cute chaos into crisis. Suddenly that Zara haul we shared on Insta doesn’t look so aspirational.
Perhaps if O’Porter hadn’t met O’Dowd, she’d have six roommates and 15 cats, but instead, she happened to work that manic pixie dream girl energy enough to find love with one of the minority of sweet, funny, creative guys who get really, truly, stinking rich. And that means she can say privileged stuff like: “I just want to write and create great work, and that’s it.”
But if we want true equality, we can’t outsource financial responsibility to the men in our lives and we can’t call ourselves feminists while playing dumb about money. Why didn’t she save what she earned when her career was going well? Why doesn’t she live within her means? Why doesn’t she get a real job? These are questions us freelance creative types are asked every day — and often by the mean girls in our own heads (they all work in fin tech.) Deep down we know they’re right — independence means knowing what’s in your bank account, saving when you can, planning for when life goes wrong — but adulting sounds so lame to your average creative type.
Just like Carrie Bradshaw and Hannah Horvath learned before her, being cool, quirky and creative when you’re young can become unmanageable as you grow up and responsibility rears its ugly, expensive head. Because when life goes wrong, relatable won’t cut it.
