Lily Allen Not Smiling after Work Visa Revoked


A past arrest has come back to haunt Lily Allen, after the British singer's U.S. work visa was revoked over the weekend.

The 22-year-old pop star was stopped by airline officials in Los Angeles on Sunday and detained for hours while the authorities questioned her about an arrest for allegedly assaulting a photographer in London earlier this year.

The singer had flown in from Australia and was planning to attend a launch event for the MTV Video Music Awards nominee announcement in Las Vegas Tuesday night.

According to a spokesman for Allen, the singer is still in the U.S.

"Lily was questioned and her work visa was revoked. She was detained for five hours but not strip-searched. Understandably she was upset by it," the spokesman said.

In an interview with the Daily Mirror newspaper, the singer said she is "trying everything I can to sort this out" before a set of U.S. concert dates scheduled for early September.

"I want my fans to know that I will do everything I can to be back in America in September. I don't like letting my fans down and this is a situation that I am sure we can sort," she said.

Allen, the daughter of actor Keith Allen, built up a following online before bursting onto the music scene with her chart-topping song Smile in the summer of 2006. She cut short a U.S. tour this past spring, saying she was "tired," "bored" and wanted to return to the studio to work on her second album.

In June, Allen was arrested and questioned over an alleged altercation with a photographer outside a London nightclub three months earlier.

source - www.cbc.ca>