Joe Yates
Amanda Bynes was one of the hottest prospects to come out of Hollywood, having landed her own show off the back of her acting, but after more than a decade out of the limelight she has broken her cover.
The 39-year-old looks almost unrecognizable 15 years on from her last appearance in a production - the highly-rated 2010 romance drama Easy A, where she led the line-up alongside two-time Oscar-winner Emma Stone.
She has traded the flashing lights of the paparazzi for that of her cell phone, after announcing that she will be filming content for OnlyFans - explaining what fans who opt in for the $50 a month subscription will see.
But in between now and her final filming project, the former The Amanda Show star has been busy to say the least.
Advert
Bynes took to Twitter back in June 2010 to share that she had fallen out of love with her job, and so had made the decision to pack it all in.
"Being an actress isn’t as fun as it may seem. If I don’t love something anymore, I stop doing it. I don’t love acting anymore, so I’ve stopped doing it. I know 24 is a young age to retire, but you heard it here first," she posted from her since-deleted account.
Eight years later, she qualified why she wanted give it up, telling Paper Magazine that her final production motivated her decision.
"I literally couldn’t stand my appearance in [Easy A] and I didn’t like my performance," Bynes told the publication. "I was absolutely convinced I needed to stop acting after seeing it."
Two years into her acting retirement, she arrested for driving under the influence (DUI) after cops pulled her over after she clipped a police car with her black BMW at around 3am in West Hollywood.
Bynes refused to take a breathalyzer test.
That was in 2012, and the same year she was charged with two hit-and-runs in April and August, the first coming not long after the DUI.
In September, her license is suspended and just weeks later her motor is impounded after she was caught driving with a suspended license, and is subsequently charged for the offense.
In February 2014, she was convicted of reckless driving and sentenced to three years probation and ordered to attend a three-month alcohol education class.
Seven months later, September 2014, cops pulled her over again in relation a DUI - having reportedly been high on cannabis at the time, but the case was later dropped.
In July 2013, she was sent to a psychiatric ward after allegedly setting fire to an elderly woman's drive, and was again the following year.
In October 2014, she was again placed in a mental health facility following a series of of disturbing tweets. She revealed a month later on the social media platform her bipolar diagnosis.
In the 2018 interview with Paper Magazine, Bynes explained how her career as an actor led to her suffering with body image issues that spiraled into a drug addiction.
She told the outlet: "When [She’s the Man] came out and I saw it, I went into a deep depression for four to six months because I didn’t like how I looked when I was a boy."
Bynes then began experimenting with the drugs she was consuming, including cocaine, ecstasy, while admitting that she 'definitely abused adderall'.
In August 2013, at the height of Bynes' mental health crisis, her parents requested that the court allow them to temporarily place the then-25-year-old under conservatorship.
A conservatorship is a court granted guardianship for individuals unable to make their own decisions. It is typically reserved for dementia patients and those suffering from severe mental health issues.
A year later, that conservatorship became a permanent fixture in October 2014.
It wasn't until 2022 that the court lifted her conservatorship.
In January 2014, she enrolled at Los Angeles' Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, but after a series of mental health issues placed her education on hold.
However, in 2017 she managed to get back on track, and in 2019 graduated - with a minor hiatus after being resubmitted into a psychiatric ward due to a stress-related relapse.
Bynes got engaged to fiancé Paul Michael in February 2020, but later called it off in 2022.