Dawn O’Porter is a Scottish writer and TV presenter. She married Chris O’Dowd in 2012, which is when she changed her surname from “Porter” to “O’Porter” and began using her new “married name” professionally. Chris talks about Dawn in nearly all of his interviews – they seem quite happily married, and they have two young sons. While Chris has been an in-demand actor for many years, Dawn has really struggled to get work, and get well-paid work. Dawn spoke to a podcast last week, and she talked about how she’s felt pretty broke for much of her professional life, and she’s currently living paycheck-to-paycheck.

Author Dawn O’Porter, wife of actor Chris O’Dowd, has faced frequent financial struggles despite the couple’s high-profile status.

“I work paycheck to paycheck. I’m always broke,” O’Porter, 46, quipped on the Friday, July 25, episode of the “White Wine Question Time” podcast. “My card got declined last week. I’m like, ‘What the f*** is happening? When will this end?’ I’ve never felt, like, I’m living [well]. Some years you’re doing well, and some years it’s just an absolute disaster. That pattern never ends.”

O’Porter has been married to the Bridesmaids actor, 45, since 2012. They welcomed children Art and Valentine in 2015 and 2017, respectively. “I’ve never seen myself as a celebrity ever, even though I’m married to Chris, who is quite a well-known actor. I don’t think either of us has ever seen ourselves as celebrities. 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 little ad on Instagram to pay the rent.”

Instead of seeing herself or her husband as major stars, O’Porter views herself as an artist, who always has to “grind” for success.

“I just want to write and create great work, and that’s it,” she added, noting she is less concerned with becoming “a brand” online.

According to O’Porter, her romance with O’Dowd started when she was particularly “poor.”

“My TV career had just gone. I was so poor. I was so upset. I had zero confidence. I didn’t know what I was going to do,” she recalled. “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.’ I went to all these events with him. … I always thought, ‘If I was in this position, it would be because I deserve it.’”

O’Porter was living with O’Dowd in Los Angeles at the time he was cast in Bridesmaids. She then asked whether they could move back to London, so O’Porter could “claw back” her career. After moving across the pond, O’Porter started writing a magazine column before landing a book deal.

“When you find your true voice on the page, it just feels like you landed,” O’Porter stressed. “It’s such a liberating, amazing moment. … I come to my desk every day, I do a solid 9 to 5, and I’m so in the zone. I’m very lucky. It saved the day.”

[From Us Weekly]

I have so many thoughts about this! I’m close in age to Dawn, and I wonder if some of her “I could have/should have built a brand for myself” thing is partly generational. Women our age kind of missed out on the “hustle culture” of the Millennials and Gen Z. We weren’t raised in the environment of “you’ve always got to strive and grind for that cash.” It’s probably even more stark when Dawn is with Chris’s industry friends and associates, and all of the wives/girlfriends have their own things going on and they’re parlaying their relationships to get more work. I also think there’s a cultural difference at play among artists – Americans are strivers, and British people just… aren’t. It’s more culturally acceptable in the UK to be a “broke artist.” They don’t take jobs for the money, and they take pride in turning down well-paying gigs so that they can keep it real with some low-paying “real art” job.

Anyway, I have so many questions about the O’Dowd and O’Porter finances now. Do they not have joint accounts? Why isn’t Chris doing more to financially support his wife? Why hasn’t he done more to help Dawn out professionally?

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.