B I O G R A P H Y

English-born singer Harry Styles rose to fame as one of the five members of the boy band One Direction. He launched his solo career in 2016 and made his acting debut in the 2017 film 'Dunkirk.'

Who is Harry Styles?

In 2010 Harry Styles auditioned for the UK television show The X Factor, where the judges combined him with four other young male singers to form One Direction. The boy band became a pop music sensation, delivering hits like "Best Song Ever" and "Story of My Life" through five immensely successful studio albums. Styles then made a solo splash in 2017 with his debut single, "Sign of the Times," and a self-titled album. In 2020, he received praise for his second solo album, Fine Line.

Early Life

Harry Edward Styles was born on February 1, 1994, in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, in the West Midlands region of England. Styles attended Holmes Chapel Comprehensive School, where he and three of his friends formed a band called White Eskimo. Styles was White Eskimo's lead singer, and the band was popular enough to win a band competition at their school.

'The X Factor'

In 2010, when he was 16 years old, Harry competed in the seventh season of the television show The X Factor, singing Stevie Wonder's "Isn't She Lovely" as his audition song and Oasis' "Stop Crying Your Heart Out" in a later round. He was cut before the finals, but in a surprise move, judges Nicole Scherzinger and Simon Cowell put him together with fellow competitors Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik to form a new group act for the remainder of the competition. Performing as One Direction, the five boys became one of the most popular contenders in the X Factor finals that season. Although they finished the competition in third place, they were immediately signed to Cowell's Syco music label.

One Direction

Styles, the youngest member of One Direction, became a fan favorite for his curly hair, wide smile and sweet-yet-naughty demeanor. He sang some of the lead vocals on the band's first single, "What Makes You Beautiful," which was released in September 2011 in the United Kingdom. One Direction's debut album, Up All Night, was a best seller in both the United Kingdom and the United States the following year. Styles went on to enjoy immense success with his bandmates, following Up All Night with Take Me Home (2012), Midnight Memories (2013) and Four (2014), all debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. The group's final album, Made in the A.M., just missed the cut by arriving at No. 2 in 2015, before the band split for a lengthy hiatus.

Solo Albums: 'Harry Styles,' 'Fine Line'

Styles made a successful solo entry in 2017 with the epic single "Sign of the Times," his accompanying self-titled album debuting in the familiar No. 1 spot. Fans then waited another two years for his next single, which came in October 2019 with the soulful "Lights Up." His sophomore solo album, Fine Line, contained his first No. 1 single, "Watermelon Sugar." That year he was also nominated for three Grammy awards.

'Dunkirk'

After appearing in concert documentaries with One Direction, Styles made his feature film debut in Christopher Nolan's 2017 war thriller Dunkirk as an Allied soldier named Alex.