A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Alias:
Velile Tshabala
Birthplace:
Whitechapel, London, England, UK
Born:
March 9, 1984
Velile Tshabalala is an English actress, known for portraying Kareesha Lopez in Kerching! and Rosita in the 2008 Doctor Who special "The Next Doctor". Born in Whitechapel, London, Tshabalala was raised in Ilford. She is of Zimbabwean descent. Her father is a mechanical engineer and her mother is a health visitor. She has one sister and two brothers. She trained at the Sylvia Young Theatre School, where she attended weekend classes from the age of 14. For higher education, she attended sixth form and completed her A-levels. Tshabalala made her professional debut at the age of 18, in the CBBC sitcom Kerching!. She played waitress Kareesha Lopez, who did very little work and was a stereotypical teenage girl. She played several roles in all three series of the BBC Three sketch comedy Tittybangbang. She appeared as a prostitute in the 2004 short film Streets. In January 2008, she played a librarian in the ChuckleVision episode "Jumping Jackpot". She played Rosita in that year's Doctor Who Christmas special "The Next Doctor". She made her pantomime debut in the 2008 production of Dick Whittington's Cat at the Compass Theatre in Ickenham. In 2011, Tshabalala very briefly appeared in the penultimate episode of series three of the E4 series Misfits as the gangs' newest probation worker, Laura. However, she only lasted for a matter of seconds after arriving at the community centre, ultimately being killed after being bitten by a zombie. In July 2014, she completed filming on the feature film The Journey. In November 2021, it was announced that Tshabalala had been cast in the Channel 4 soap opera Hollyoaks as Viv, the mother of established character DeMarcus Westwood (Tomi Ade). In February 2022, she starred as Gloria in Running with Lions at the Lyric Theatre, London. In 2024, Tshabalala began appearing as recurring character Stella Clayton in Eastenders. Her day job is currently at the St Marylebone Bridge School working as a teaching assistant.
Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).
Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.
Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.