Crystal was 18 when bone cancer changed her face. On top of chemotherapy and operations, she had to deal with other painful realities too.

She told Sky News: “Pre-cancer, and everything that happened I wasn’t aware how people who had facial differences were villainised or victimised.

“Experiencing that, seeing the trauma, I’ve been so affected by people staring at me in the street, and hate comments about my appearance.”

She believes part of the problem is the screen portrayal of visibly different characters: “There’s a narrative in Hollywood, especially that’s been going on for years, that people are not addressing and seeing that these are real people.”

Refusing to let her differences keep her from pursuing her dreams, Crystal studied acting at LAMDA, one of the UK’s top drama schools.

Now a professional actress, she knows her appearance will always be judged.

“[My visible difference] is on my face. I can’t really hide anything. Every time I talk or enter a room, it’s not like anyone’s fault, I just know that people have that first perception or viewpoint of me.”

With aspirations to one day appear in a Marvel movie, she hopes her drive to perform will help others in the future.

“I didn’t have anyone who looked like me as a role model… It would have just been so much better if I’d had that one person to look up to, to be inspired by.”

Lack of representation is not the only problem. When visible difference does make it onto the screen, misrepresentations and negative overtones often reinforce stigma.

Nearly one in five people in the UK self-identifying as having a visible difference, such as a mark, scar or condition, according to charity Changing Faces.

New research they conducted into the way disfigurement is portrayed on screen found that people with visible differences were over twice as likely to be shown as a victim or a villain than as a love interest.

Film and television have used scars, burns and birthmarks as a shorthand for villainy across the genres for years. From Bond to Batman and Star Wars, to more family-friendly productions such as The Lion King.

And while visibly different characters aren’t common on screen, a woman with a physical difference in film or TV is even rarer.

Author and entertainment journalist Kristen Lopez says it’s because women’s value on screen is so tied up with their sexuality.

The author of Popcorn Disabilities: The Highs and Lows of Disabled Representation in the Movies has even come up with a term to describe the industry’s attempt to keep their leading ladies “sexy and beautiful”.

“You often see what I call ‘pretty disabilities’. It’s a disability that is not going to affect the physical perfection of the actress. And it will also allow for an A-list, usually non-disabled actress, to continue to play the character.”

Lopez says for that reason, films are more comfortable with portraying blind or visually impaired women, deaf women, or non-verbal women, because their disability “doesn’t mar the face”.

Speaking from her own experience of growing up with brittle bone disease, she says: “I worry about the next generation of disabled girls – what are they seeing? Do they feel represented?

“How do you navigate adolescence if you don’t see anybody that looks like you doing the things that every other young person is doing?”

Romeo Olukotun was just one year old when an accident left him with second and third-degree burns on his torso, chest and neck.

With his accident not spoken about at home, he admits, “I just kind of had to deal with that on my own”.

He did find some flashes of inspiration, including from singer Seal.

“I loved how even though he had a visible difference and scarring on his face, he wasn’t looked down because of that. He was seen for his talent.”

With his confidence taking a hit due to his scars while at secondary school and university, he rebuilt his self-esteem as an adult through cheerleading.

Later spotted at a music video shoot he’d gone along to with a friend, he’s now an actor and model. But his visible differences have, at times, affected his casting.

Romeo told Sky News: “Because my scar on my neck looks like I’ve been stabbed, I would often be asked to ‘Try this [performance] like a thug or someone who’s on the streets’. And I didn’t like being labelled as that. I’m someone who is much more than my scars.”

He’s now a man on a mission: “I want to be someone who shows other people with a visible difference that they can be anything. They can play the romantic lead, they can play a villain if they want to. They can be a hero, not just be labelled as someone sinister and evil, Machiavellian.”

While the film and TV industries might be slow to change, LAMDA vice principal Dr Philippa Strandberg-Long is hopeful for the future.

“We have to make our students aware of the industry that they are going into and not, I guess, create a utopia where they’re not aware of the industry they’re going into. However, we can change it from how we educate our students that come out.

“Things won’t change overnight, but it will change over time. So, we have to put in the work at the grassroots, which is here.”

Changing Faces is the UK’s leading charity for anyone with a visible difference. They have a confidential support and information line for anyone dealing with the impact of visible difference.

Conservationists in Ibiza are warning the island’s native bright blue and green lizards are coming ever closer to extinction due to the mounting threats of invasive snakes and tourists’ litter.

The Ibiza wall lizard is endemic to Ibiza and neighbouring Formentera and is vital to the ecosystem of the islands, experts say, for pollinating plants and controlling pests.

Since the 2000s, the small, colourful reptiles, which are harmless to humans, have become endangered due to the proliferation of invasive snakes that first arrived in imported trees.

Conservation foundation IbizaPreservation says snakes are now present on up to 90% of the island, while the lizard population has decreased massively, believed to have disappeared from about 70%.

But there is also another issue affecting the species – litter left mainly by tourists at beauty spots.

Dean Gallagher, a snake catcher on the island, says he is constantly finding the bodies of dead lizards stuck inside discarded bottles and cans at Es Savinar, a southerly viewpoint where people often gather for sunset.

“I’m finding these lizards trapped in cans and bottles,” he tells Sky News. “Once they get inside their feet get wet from the drink inside, the beer or the Red Bull, and they can’t get out. Sun comes up, heats up the bottle, the can, and just fries a lizard inside. It’s absolutely devastating.”

Tourism accounts for about 84% of Ibiza’s economy and is vital for the island, with tourist spending reaching 4.3bn euros in 2024, according to the Balearic Institute of Statistics (IBESTAT) – an increase of 62% since 2016. The number of tourists reached a record high of more than 3.7m for Ibiza and neighbouring Formentera in 2023 – an increase of almost 25% since 2016.

The land Dean looks after at Es Savinar is private, he says, but people ignore signs and fences which were replaced at the beginning of the summer.

“We do rubbish collections probably once or twice a week,” he says. “We clear the whole area of bottles and cans then the next time, we go back and there’s even more.

“Bottles can cause bush fires. The forests are really dry at the moment, just one spark can set this place alight. And [litter] is also killing our lizards. They’re marvellous, beautiful creatures, they’re not aggressive and they keep the bugs away. The ecological value is really important.”

Dean lives near Santa Eulalia, where he says numbers are scarce. “Lots of parts of the north of the island now, they’ve completely diminished and it’s very sad,” he adds.

“And the very southwest corner of the island where this viewpoint is, this is the last place where they are in stable numbers. But the excessive rubbish, tourism, snakes, are gonna wipe them out completely.”

Visual surveys of areas of Ses Salines Natural Park by environmental association GEN-GOB have found the population there has decreased by between 70% and 90% since 2023.

GEN-GOB, Friends Of The Earth Ibiza and IbizaPreservation are among several organisations that have been working to save the species in recent years.

Read more:
Is Ibiza at breaking point?

Jordi Serapio, coordinator of Protegim Ses Sargantanes, IbizaPreservation’s lizard protection project, says abandoned bottles and cans are “deadly traps” for the animals.

And snake numbers continue to grow and expand toward territories where lizards still remain, he adds. The most common snake on the island – and the biggest danger to lizards – is the horseshoe whip snake, but other types have been spotted.

“It has followed a northeast to southwest expansion,” he says. “The highest snake densities are observed in what they have called the ‘invasion front’ – this is known precisely thanks to trapping.

“In contrast, in areas where lizards have already become extinct, there appears to be a much lower density of snakes.”

So the more food available for the snakes, the higher the numbers.

“This is something common in most biological invasions, which end up regulating themselves naturally,” Jordi says. “The unknown in this case is whether some lizard populations will manage to survive and adapt. Although everything seems to indicate that they won’t.”

He also highlights another problem – predation by both feral and domestic cats – which he says is a growing threat.

“In the current context of the species’ extinction, any additional pressure worsens the situation.”

Former London’s Burning actor John Alford has been found guilty of sexually assaulting girls aged 14 and 15 at a friend’s home.

Jurors heard the 53-year-old, who rose to fame in BBC show Grange Hill, sexually assaulted the girls while they were drunk following a night out at the pub.

St Albans Crown Court was told he bought £250 worth of food, alcohol and cigarettes from a nearby petrol station in the early hours of the morning, including a bottle of vodka which the victims subsequently drank.

Alford then had sexual intercourse with the 14-year-old girl in the garden of the home and later in a downstairs toilet, and inappropriately touched the 15-year-old girl as she lay half asleep on the living room sofa.

He denied four counts of sexual activity with the younger girl and charges of sexual assault and assault by penetration relating to the second teenager at a property in Hertfordshire on April 9 2022.

But, after 13 hours of deliberations, he was found guilty.

Alford, of Holloway, north London, who was charged under his real name John Shannon, had previously told the court the allegations were a “set-up”.

He put his head in his hand and shouted “Wrong, I didn’t do this” from the dock as the verdicts were read out in court.

‘I didn’t want sex with an old man’

During the week-long trial, Alford, who cried while giving evidence, told jurors “I never touched either of them girls”, adding there was “no DNA” evidence and that he would stand by his denial “until the day I die”.

However, the 15-year-old girl said: “We were all just like dozing off. That was when John started to touch me.”

Asked how she felt after the assault, the girl said: “Sick. I felt absolutely sick. I wasn’t going to tell anyone.”

In a video of her police interview played to the court, the 14-year-old girl said she had never had sex before the night of the alleged incidents.

“I told him to stop because I didn’t want to have sex with an old man,” she said.