Kate Cassidy said that she was told her passport photo didn’t match her current appearance
Always check your passport is valid before travel
People across the UK may need to update their passports before their holiday. The reminder comes after one woman was stopped and questioned at the airport.
According to GOV.UK officials: “You must get a new photo when you get a new passport, even if your appearance has not changed.” However, it also states that you will “need to get a new passport to travel abroad or prove your identity if you change your name” and “your gender.”
GOV.UK adds you will also need to get a new passport if “your appearance” has changed and “you cannot be recognised from your passport photo any more (for example, you’ve had plastic surgery).”
The reminder for UK passengers to update their travel document, if needed, comes as 27-year-old Kate Cassidy, who had been dating One Direction’s Liam Payne for two years at the time of his death in 2024, shared her experience getting flagged by TSA staff after she was told her passport photo didn’t match her current appearance.
While she said she understood the rules, she pointed out that “there are way better ways to handle things and word things.” In her TikTok video, viewed almost 1 million times, she said: “I just got genuinely ridiculed at the Fort Lauderdale airport. I’m at the security line, and I gave the guy my passport, and they obviously do a photo view.
“If it matches your passport, you get the green light, and if it doesn’t match your passport, you get the red light. I got the red light because my photo, I guess, didn’t match my appearance.”
After showing her passport photo to the camera, she explained that airport security said she looked unrecognisable in comparison to the other picture. She said: “He calls over a woman, and she literally looks at my passport, she looks at me, she’s doing a double take, up and down, and this woman keeps going on and on and on about how, ‘this isn’t you, you’re giving me somebody else’s passport”.
Kate explained that the staff questioned, “new nose? New lips? Something to your eyes? New hair?”. Kate then pulled out her ID to confirm her identity, but she said that her ID was not hers either. Looking at Kate’s passport, ID and then her, Kate said: “She goes ‘one, two, three. Those are three different people’.”
READ MORE: Tesco makes ‘Kids Eat Free’ announcement affecting 332 stores from MondayREAD MORE: ‘Bungling doctors spent 7 years treating me for terminal cancer I never had’
The American social media influencer admitted: “I’m literally so embarrassed. She then goes and calls three different men over. One guy was like, ‘do you not have a work ID?’ and I was like, ‘I can pull up my Instagram, I don’t know what to do.’
“Keep in mind that everybody in line behind me is listening to this. I understand they’re doing their job. At the same time, I think there are way better ways to handle things and word things.”
In another video, after the airport incident, she listed exactly what procedures altered her appearance. She mentioned that she has cheek filler, chin filler, Botox, a boob job, nose job and lip filler.
She also noted she’s a natural blonde but dyes her hair brown. She further said she has “a whole head of extensions, fake nails, and I am also naturally super pale, so I do spray tans once a week.”
It’s not just travellers that need to think about this. Motoring experts on GOV.UK confirm: “You must change the photo on your driving licence if you cannot be recognised from your photo, for example, if you’ve had plastic surgery.” This includes learner drivers who will need to take their provisional licence to the test centre.