One Friday night in New York, Harry Styles put on a show. It wasn’t just any show; it was the first time he performed his third and soon-to-be-biggest album, Harry’s House, in its entirety. The crowd that night covered Long Island’s UBS Arena in feathers and glitter and tears — a ritualistic skin shedding of sorts whenever Styles comes to town.
Fans could tell there was something different about the encore as Styles didn’t end with his usual closer, “Kiwi”; instead, he opted to finish the night with a second performance of his new single “As It Was,” his dance-through-the-tears pandemic reflection on isolation and change. When he played it, the crowd exploded in a way even Styles had never experienced. It left him shaken.Styles narrating the event said……“We came offstage, and I went into my dressing room and just wanted to sit by myself for a minute.”
“After One Direction, I didn’t expect to ever experience anything new. I kind of felt like, ‘All right, I’ve seen how crazy it can get.’ And I think there was something about it where I was … not terrified, but I just needed a minute. Because I wasn’t sure what it was. Just that the energy felt insane.”
At the age of 28, Styles has unlocked a new level of stardom for himself. Before now, he regularly filled stadiums as a member of One Direction, his former boy band. This spring and summer, he’s playing them on his own. “As It Was” has become his hugest song yet, setting streaming records and topping the charts in more than two dozen countries, including 10 weeks straight in the U.S.
Because he’s a famous star with mostly young female fans, many people have only seen him as a cute teen idol and nothing more. (I don’t need to explain decades of music history to show why that’s not true.) But he’s noticing things shift in interesting ways. “I’ve noticed more guys coming up to me about ‘As It Was’,” he says. “It’s weird because appealing to men wasn’t the goal. It’s just something I’ve noticed.”
Prior to his headlining set at Coachella which held in April, Harry was seen backstage, surrounded by James Corden, Styles’ onstage guest Shania Twain, and his girlfriend, Olivia Wilde.
But today, in a Hamburg hotel, Styles is still trying to make sense of it all. He thinks hard about love, shame, honesty, and the importance of kindness and therapy. And he worries. He worries about how he can be one of the biggest pop stars in the world, the kind who can be everything for his fans while also being a great son, brother, friend, and partner to the people standing beside him. As everything gets bigger, Styles imagines a life that is smaller. How does the world’s most wanted man save the best parts for himself?
Nowadays, besides his hit songs and big world tour, there are more signs that Harry Styles is reaching a whole new level of fame: he’s got his own skincare, nail polish, and clothing line
After performing two packed shows at Wembley Stadium in June, Styles had a routine. As soon as he finished on stage each night, he headed straight for a shower. This post-show shower wasn’t just about getting clean; it was a moment for him to clear his mind and think. He used it to wash away the overwhelming screams of love and adoration from the crowd. “Standing in front of so many people and feeling all that energy is really strange,” he explains. “When you wash it off,
As Styles rises to become one of the most prominent pop stars globally, his desire for privacy, to shield his vulnerable self from the public eye, appears to have intensified. Maintaining secrecy has been crucial in deflecting constant inquiries about his personal life, particularly regarding his sexuality, which began as soon as he reached adulthood.
In recent years, he has prioritized regular therapy sessions. “I’ve made a commitment to attend therapy once a week,” he says. “I see it as taking care of my mind, just like how I exercise and take care of my body.”
Drawing the curtain over his life has only made everyone who’s not behind it more curious. His sexuality, for example, has been a topic of near-obsession for years. He has embraced gender fluidity in his fashion, like Mick Jagger and David Bowie before him, and has repeatedly pointed out how backward it feels to require labels and boxes for everyone’s identity. Critics of his approach have accused him of “queerbaiting,” or profiting off queer aesthetics without explicitly claiming the community. Defenders feel it’s unfair to force anyone to label themselves as one thing in order to validate their gender or creative expression.
Styles, without prompting, points out how silly he finds some of the arguments about how he may identify to be: “Sometimes people say, ‘You’ve only publicly been with women,’ and I don’t think I’ve publicly been with anyone. If someone takes a picture of you with someone, it doesn’t mean you’re choosing to have a public relationship or something.”
Of late, this can be contested. While he is everywhere, so is Olivia Wilde. The pair met on the set of Don’t Worry Darling, which she directed (more on that in a moment), then made a splash when paparazzi snapped them holding hands at his manager and close friend Jeffrey Azoff’s wedding in January 2021.
Wilde and Styles have said little about the relationship, and rumors have filled the space. Anonymous tweeters acted appalled at their age difference (as if a 28-year-old man dating a 38-year-old woman isn’t completely normal) and criticized the director-actor dating dynamic (as if there isn’t a long history of beloved Hollywood couples meeting the same way).
Despite the boundaries he’s set between his public and private lives, sometimes “other people blur the lines for you,” he says. There’s a conversation he has to have early in a relationship, no matter how weird or premature it may feel. “Can you imagine,” he says, “going on a second date with someone and being like, ‘OK, there’s this corner of the thing, and they’re going to say this, and it’s going to be really crazy, and they’re going to be really mean, and it’s not real.… But anyway, what do you want to eat?’ ”STYLES BECAME A leading man when he was four years old, starring in a play called Barney the Church Man. Later, he transformed into Buzz Lightyear in a production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang “because Buzz Lightyear was in the toy shop for some reason.” His other early theater credits include: Razamatazz in Bugsy Malone (“the band leader”) and the Elvis-inspired Pharaoh in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. (He would later audition for Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, but was deemed too iconic by the director.)
Other than that, acting wasn’t really part of his life plan. He liked it, but he found a new rush when he started performing with his band White Eskimo. When they debuted at — and won — a Battle of the Bands competition, it was the first time he felt “the switch”: his teachers looking up at him, instead of vice versa. “I think I was just a showoff,” he says, with a hint of cheekiness. “I say that like it’s past tense.”
But as Styles was preparing the release of his solo debut in 2017, he took his first foray back into acting, with a supporting role in Christopher Nolan’s war epic Dunkirk. (The director said he had no idea how famous Styles was when he cast him.) By the time Marvel recruited him to become Eros, director Chloé Zhao had no one else but Styles in mind for the role. Thanos’ more heroic brother is portrayed in the comics as an intergalactic playboy of sorts, with superhuman strength and the ability to control people’s emotions (a fitting role for the planet’s hottest pop star). MCU boss Kevin Feige recently teased more from Styles, though so far, his only appearance has been the Eternals’ post-credits scene, alongside the Patton Oswalt-voiced Pip. “It’d be funny if that was it, wouldn’t it?” he jokes of his cameo.
Styles’ role in Dunkirk grabbed Wilde’s attention as she was beginning to map out Don’t Worry Darling. He was an early contender for the role of Jack, a charming but secretive husband to Florence Pugh’s increasingly troubled Alice. And Styles had plenty of reasons to be interested in Don’t Worry Darling. Wilde’s second feature film as a director reportedly started a bidding war among 18 studios, following the success of her directorial debut, Booksmart.
Pre-pandemic talks between Styles and the Darling team didn’t make it far; he was, after all, due on a global tour for most of 2020. Instead, Shia LaBeouf won the role, but by the end of that summer, Wilde had reportedly booted the actor for poor on-set behavior.
“I’d wanted to act again,” Styles says. He spent a lot of the pandemic watching movies with his quarantine set of friends and collaborators: He rescreened favorites like the 2012 Belgian drama The Broken Circle Breakdown. Some nights, he and his friends would put a bunch of titles in a hat and choose. (“There was a couple different tastes in the house, so it was between, like, Parasite and Coyote Ugly.”)
Styles was announced as LaBeouf’s replacement a month before filming began. He proved perfect for the role of Jack, who’s brought Alice to the remote, fictional American town of Victory to work on a secret project the men at the company won’t tell their wives about. Jack’s become a star employee and is desperate for his boss’s approval. “We were looking for someone with innate warmth and palpable charm,” Wilde says. “The entire story depended on the audience believing in Jack.”
Styles shot Don’t Worry Darling between September 2020 and February 2021 in L.A. and Palm Springs. Those months were the longest Styles had lived in one place in 11 years. He thought about going completely off the grid while making it: maybe get a flip phone, stop making music. “The reality is you get there on the first day and wait around for 75 percent of it,” he says. “And it’s like, ‘Actually I’m going to text my mate.’ ”
Initially, he felt a natural apprehension about stepping into such a significant role alongside acclaimed actors such as Pugh, Chris Pine, Gemma Chan, and Nick Kroll. “In the realm of music, there’s an immediate reaction to your performance. You finish a song, and people applaud,” he reflects. “But in filming, when they call ‘cut,’ there’s this fleeting expectation for applause, which doesn’t come. Instead, everyone resumes their tasks, leaving you to wonder, ‘Was it that bad?'” Acting, he realized, resembled the role of session musicians: “You’re brought in to contribute your part, and then others assemble and finalize the piece.”
The risk may pay off: He and Pugh are already getting awards-season buzz. Wilde says one moment “left us all in tears” — Jack’s promotion scene during a big company gala. “It’s a strange scene, full of fascist references, and a disturbing amount of male rage,” Wilde says. “The scene called for him to stand onstage with Frank (Chris Pine) and chant their creepy slogan, ‘Whose world, is it? Ours!’ over and over again. Dark as hell. But Harry took it to another level. He was so fully in the moment, he began screaming the lines to the crowd, in this primal roar, that was way more intense than anything we expected from the scene.”
According to Wilde, Pine backed away, understanding this was Harry’s moment. “The camera operator followed him as he paced around the stage like a kind of wild animal,” Wilde remembers. “We were all gobsmacked at the monitor. I think even Harry was surprised by it. Those are the best moments for an actor — when you’re completely outside your body.”
Within weeks, Styles went from the set of Darling to shooting the more intimate My Policeman. He had read the script the year prior, moved by the story enough to have contacted director Michael Grandage and request a meeting. Styles showed up with every line memorized.
Styles plays Tom, a policeman who develops feelings for a museum curator named Patrick (David Dawson). Set in the Fifties, when it was still illegal to be in a same-sex relationship in the U.K., the pair move in secret while Tom pursues a marriage with a schoolteacher named Marion (Emma Corrin). The film shifts between the past and the present, when the three reunite under dire circumstances. “It’s obviously pretty unfathomable now to think, ‘Oh, you couldn’t be gay. That was illegal,” Styles says. “I think everyone, including myself, has your own journey with figuring out sexuality and getting more comfortable with it.” To him, My Policeman is a very human story. “It’s not like ‘This is a gay story about these guys being gay.’ It’s about love and about wasted time to me.”
According to Styles, Grandage wanted to highlight what sex is really like between two men in the scenes between Tom and Patrick. “So much of gay sex in film is two guys going at it, and it kind of removes the tenderness from it,” Styles continues. “There will be, I would imagine, some people who watch it who were very much alive during this time when it was illegal to be gay, and [Michael] wanted to show that it’s tender and loving and sensitive.”
Darling and Policeman make their big premieres at prestigious film festivals in Venice and Toronto late this summer, but Styles isn’t sure his pivot to the silver screen will be permanent. “I don’t imagine I’d do a movie for a while,” he says. There are rumors about how many Marvel movies he’s signed on for and other franchises he might be secretly in talks to do. (In response to a rumor he’ll be starring in a future Star Wars series, he says, “That’s the first I’ve heard of that. I’d imagine … false.”)
He doesn’t rule out taking on new roles. “I think there’ll be a time again when I’ll crave it,” he says. “But when you’re making music, something’s happening. It feels really creative, and it feeds stuff. A large part of acting is the doing-nothing, waiting thing. Which if that’s the worst part, then it’s a pretty good job. But I don’t find that section of it to be that fulfilling. I like doing it in the moment, but I don’t think I’ll do it a lot.”
On past tours, he says, “I was getting to a lot of cities and feeling like ‘I’ve been here six times and I’ve never seen any of it.’ ” This tour, he’s been taking in a lot of architecture. “It’s something I can do on my own, just sit somewhere and look at stuff,” he says.
Studying the finer points of buildings fits the regimented, disciplined, and distinctly grown-up tour life he’s created. Styles has found himself enamored with routine on the road: 10 hours of sleep a night, IV injections pumping him with nutrients and vitamins, a strict acid-reflux-conscious diet that cuts out coffee, alcohol, and certain foods that affect the throat 50,000 fans are depending on. Last night, he slept with two humidifiers that apparently made it look like he was stepping out of a steam room when he opened his hotel-room door.
Styles has a gift for making those in his presence feel seen. Just ask fans who bump into him on walks through Central Park or Hampstead Heath, then detail those moments as if they had met the pope (granted, the pope could never pull off a hair claw).
Before the second half of the concert at the Elphi, the crowd mingles and grabs drinks. As we walk through, Styles goes unnoticed. (The mask helps.) It’s funny to watch one of the world’s biggest pop stars move through space with such ease, as if he’s blissfully unaware of how well-known he is.
“If you make your life about the fact that you can’t go anywhere and everything has to be a big deal, then that’s what your life becomes,” he says. “Now, in London, I walk everywhere. It’s hard to stumble across things and restaurants and places and stuff if you’re just driving everywhere, and it’s just not that fun.”
Styles outlines his upcoming months for me: In August, after he wraps his European tour in Lisbon, he’ll go on vacation with some friends, maybe catch up on the Love Island season he was “gutted” to miss or see if The Bear is as good as everyone tells him it is. The next leg of his tour includes stops in L.A., New York, Austin, and Chicago as extended residencies, a decision that meets his personal need for a less strenuous touring schedule and a professional need to be able to attend film festivals and rent studios to write and record music for his fourth album. “I’m always writing,” he says. He and his collaborators are already throwing around ideas. “I think all of us are so excited to get back to it, which feels insane because we’ve just put an album out.”
More than ever, he is thinking about the future. He wants to take meaningful time off at some point — from touring at least, he’s always writing — and ensure he’s a more present figure for his family and friends. In turn, he’s learned to define what real love looks like to him. “The fantasy, or the vision, or the version of you that people can build you up to be feels like a person that isn’t flawed,” he explains. “What I value the most from my friends is I feel like I’m constantly reminded that it’s OK to be flawed. I think I’m pretty messy and make mistakes sometimes. I think that’s the most loving thing: You can see someone’s imperfections, and it’s not [that you] love them in spite of that, but it’s [that you] love them with that.”
He’s thinking about what it would be like if he had children one day: “Well, if I have kids at some point, I will encourage them to be themselves and be vulnerable and share.”
Styles admits that as a teenager, he was less interested in politics, oblivious to things that didn’t personally affect him. This changed as he grew more famous, he worried about that, too. “I took a massive look at myself,” he says, “and was like, ‘Oh, I don’t do enough . . . or anything.” When conversations around anti-Blackness and inaction reached a fever pitch in 2020, Styles marched in the streets and read books like How to Be an Anti-Racist, by Ibram X. Kendi, and The Will to Change, by bell hooks. He began thinking about racial and gender equity, especially as someone who employs many people on the road. “Pretending as a white person you don’t get a head start just isn’t true,” he says.
We walk out before the crowd fully disperses. Styles lingers a second to take some photos of the room before he heads out to get ready for his concert, where he’ll bounce around the stage, lifted by the wails of young fans who have been waiting years for this moment.
His fans will linger tonight, too, crowding in the hundreds outside Volksparkstadion. They’ll take photos of their outfits, their tear- and sweat-stained glittery faces, the piles of abandoned boa feathers. They’ll play his big hits back to him, holding a phone-light vigil as they sing One Direction’s “Night Changes” or the Fine Line ballad “Falling.” As the city echoes as much of him as it can take, he’ll probably be washing it all away.
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