Lamissah La-Shontae is an English actress and model from Burnley, Lancashire, who built an unusually early screen career around horror and thriller work while simultaneously becoming one of her town’s most visible young charity campaigners.
She began fundraising at five, took her first credited film role at eight, and by her mid-teens had combined background and supporting television work with lead roles in independent British genre features.
In 2021 she received the Medal of Honour at the British Citizen Youth Awards, and in 2025 she appeared in the crime comedy Jafaican alongside Peter Andre, the two having first met almost a decade earlier through her charity work.
Profile
| Full Name | Lamissah La-Shontae Imaan Bhatti |
| Known As | Lamissah La-Shontae |
| Date of Birth | 11 September 2007 |
| Age | 19 |
| Birthplace | Burnley, Lancashire, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Actress, model, charity campaigner |
| Years Active | 2016 onward (screen acting) |
| Education | Shuttleworth College, Padiham |
| Known For | Kin, Tribal: Get Out Alive, Mr Hyde: The Untold Story, Jafaican |
Early Life and Family
Lamissah La-Shontae was born on 11 September 2007 in Burnley, Lancashire, where she was raised and where she has remained based throughout her career. Her mother, Zohra Bhatti, has acted as the family spokesperson in most local press coverage of her daughter’s work and manages much of the administrative side of her career.
Two family circumstances shaped her childhood in ways that carried directly into her public life. The first was the death of her grandfather, whose hospital care she witnessed as a small child. The second was the ongoing illness of her younger brother, Xavier, who lives with complex health conditions and whose hospital stays she regularly accompanied. Seeing other sick children during those visits was, by her family’s account, the reason she began fundraising before she had even started school.
Her entry into modelling came earlier still. She was photographed for the retailer Mothercare as an infant, and signed with a model and casting agency at around six years old, the same period in which she began appearing in television commercials.
Education
La-Shontae attended Shuttleworth College in Padiham, near Burnley, where she remained a pupil through the years in which her acting and modelling commitments intensified.
Regional coverage between 2021 and 2023 tracked her progression through the school year by year, from Year 9 to Year 11, while she was filming and attending award ceremonies in London. Beyond her secondary schooling, no further formal qualifications have been publicly documented.
Acting Career
Her first credited acting role came at the age of eight, playing Ella Fortuna in the 2016 film Kin. That was followed in 2018 by work on Deadline and Case Files, the latter of which cast her as the young version of the character Shannon Walker.
What followed was a period of steady, largely unglamorous accumulation of screen experience. Between 2019 and 2021 she took background and small speaking parts across a run of mainstream British television productions filmed in the north of England, including Netflix’s The Stranger, Sky’s Tin Star, CBBC’s The Worst Witch, Channel 4’s Ackley Bridge, the BBC drama Anthony, and the series Lagging. Most of these were uncredited pupil or student roles. Taken individually they are minor; taken together they amount to a practical apprenticeship on professional sets during her early teens, and they distinguish her trajectory from that of child actors who arrive through a single high-profile part.
A Specialism in Horror
Running alongside the television work is the strand that defines her filmography most clearly. La-Shontae has concentrated heavily on horror and thriller productions, a preference she has stated openly on her professional casting profiles, describing a particular comfort with dark, frightening material and with the physical demands of screaming and distress work. Her own website has likewise identified horror and thriller as her speciality.
That specialism produced roles including The Child in Tribal: Get Out Alive (2020), Sienna in Brutally Tormented (2020), Bully Yasmin in the short Birthday Blood (2021), Young Sarah in Ghost Track (2022), Jessica Mason in He’s Watching You (2024), and Willow in the horror film Wither. She has also worked in practical special-effects makeup, frequently creating her own horror looks and producing tutorial content on the subject, an adjacent skill that is unusual for a performer of her age and that feeds directly back into the genre she works in.
Mr Hyde and Jafaican
Two 2020s projects moved her from independent genre work toward larger casts. In 2023 she was cast as Dr Kate Parker, a trainee surgeon, in Mr Hyde: The Untold Story, a reworking of the Jekyll and Hyde story made by DB13 Productions in association with Golden Gate Productions and written and directed by Dan Brothers. Filming took place in Northamptonshire, and the cast included Adam Astill in the title role, Rachel Warren, Amber Doig-Thorne and Jake Cornish. The film was released in 2024.
The better-known credit is Jafaican, the crime comedy written and directed by Fredi ‘Kruga’ Nwaka in which she plays Sasha. Shot in London and Jamaica, the film stars Peter Andre as a small-time crook attempting an elaborate fraud, with a supporting cast including Wil Johnson, Oliver Samuels, Jamie Lomas and the reggae artist Sizzla Kalonji. It premiered at the Gold Coast Film Festival in Australia in the spring of 2025 and received a UK release on 20 May 2025. Critical reception was poor, and the film drew criticism over its handling of Jamaican cultural material; its commercial profile nonetheless made it the widest-seen work of her career to date.
Jafaican also closed a loop that began in her charity work. She had first met Peter Andre at six years old, roughly a year into her fundraising, at a point when she had no professional connection to him at all. Being cast opposite him a decade later is the kind of coincidence that local press understandably seized on, and she has spoken about the experience as a significant learning point in her development as an actor.
Modelling
La-Shontae’s modelling career has run continuously alongside her acting rather than preceding or following it. She has worked in commercial, print, editorial and runway modelling, and by her mid-teens had walked at fashion weeks including London, Paris and Liverpool. She also fronted the 2022 edition of Burnley Lifestyle Magazine, styled for the shoot by the Lancashire designer Sameera Mohmed, in an issue built around women from the town working in their respective fields.
One modelling project connects directly to her personal history. After undergoing removal of a benign skin melanoma as a teenager, she took part in an international campaign featuring models with visible scarring from causes including cancer and burns, turning a health scare into advocacy work rather than keeping it private.
Charity Work
The charitable side of her public profile is, by volume of coverage, at least as prominent as her acting. She began raising money at five, initially for the Rainbow Child Foundation, which supports underprivileged children internationally, taking part in a natural pageant representing Burnley to do so. Her fundraising since has included a sponsored swim, a charity children’s day, fashion shows, a sponsored walk and carol singing, totalling a reported £10,000.
Alongside the fundraising, she has made regular visits to children’s hospitals to read to patients and spend time with them, and has assembled Christmas boxes and gift bags at her own expense. She has campaigned publicly on mental health, bullying and abuse, and holds ambassadorial roles with several charities and organisations. In recognition of the work, the Mayor and Mayoress of Burnley invited her to the council chamber in 2021, a repeat of a civic reception she had first received in 2014, aged six.
Awards and Nominations
- 2021 — British Citizen Youth Awards — Medal of Honour — Winner
- 2021 — National Diversity Awards — Positive Role Model (Age) — Nominee
- 2022 — National Diversity Awards — Positive Role Model (Age) — Nominee
- 2022 — Child of Britain Awards — Nominee
- 2023 — Charles Gordon Trust Golden Lion Awards — Young Achievers Excellence Award — Shortlisted
The British Citizen Youth Award is the under-18 strand of the British Citizen Awards, sometimes described as “The People’s Honours”, and recognises young people making a difference in their communities. La-Shontae was one of 23 recipients on the 2021 roll of honour and was presented with her medal at the Palace of Westminster by Nicky Cox MBE, patron of the awards and editor of First News, at a ceremony hosted by Anthea Turner. She uses the post-nominal “BCA” professionally as a result.
Social Media
La-Shontae maintains an active online presence that her professional profile now partly rests on. Her accounts, linked from her official website, include:
- Official website — lamissahlashontae.net
- Instagram — @lamissahlashontae
- Facebook — /LamissahLaShontae
- X (Twitter) — @lamissahb
- YouTube — Lamissah La-Shontae
Her Instagram following was reported by regional press as exceeding 200,000 during 2022 and 2023, and stood at roughly 242,000 when observed in September 2026. Follower figures change continuously and should be treated as a snapshot rather than a fixed fact.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Lamissah La-Shontae?
She is a British actress and model from Burnley, Lancashire, known for independent horror and thriller films, supporting television work, and a long-running record of youth charity campaigning.
How old is Lamissah La-Shontae?
She was born on 11 September 2007 and is 19 years old.
What was her first acting role?
She played Ella Fortuna in the 2016 film Kin, filmed when she was eight years old.
Which film is she best known for?
Her widest-released credit is Jafaican (2025), the Fredi Nwaka crime comedy starring Peter Andre, in which she plays Sasha. She also appeared in Mr Hyde: The Untold Story (2024) as trainee surgeon Dr Kate Parker.
What award has she won?
She received the Medal of Honour at the 2021 British Citizen Youth Awards, presented at the Palace of Westminster, for her charity and community work. Her other listed honours are nominations or shortlistings rather than wins.
Why is she associated with horror films?
Horror and thriller work is a stated preference rather than a coincidence of casting. She has described a particular affinity for dark material on her professional casting profiles, and she also performs special-effects makeup, which keeps her working within the genre both in front of and behind the camera.
Conclusion
La-Shontae’s career is a useful illustration of how a screen career can be assembled outside the usual routes: not through a breakout role, but through a decade of accumulated set experience, a deliberate genre specialism, and a parallel public profile built on community work that predates the acting entirely.
Her most-seen film to date was not her best-received one, and much of her filmography sits in independent horror that will never reach a wide audience.
What is documented and durable is the length of the apprenticeship, screen work from eight, fundraising from five, and the national recognition that the second of those earned her before she turned fifteen.
