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DIRECTOR ON POP STAR’S ROLE IN DUNKIRK
READ THE REVIEW ON PAGE 39 with the band taking a break, Styles was back in front of appraising eyes to see if he had what it takes to impress Nolan.
The director said: “When you’ve found the right person for the role, as I had with Harry, you have to follow that.
“Whatever baggage there is, it’s no different to casting Ken Branagh or Mark Rylance and worrying about what they have done before.
“With great actors, and Harry is a great actor, as people will see, you don’t worry about other things they have done, you trust that they are going to create a characterisation for the audience that allows them to lose themselves.”
Styles did one of his first auditions with Fionn Whitehead, the young star of the film whose face is on the posters but whose CV had only three episodes of a TV mini-series on it before he landed the role.
Sitting together in a London hotel room, Styles said: “We auditioned together and I was sitting in a cold, lonely room and Fionn came in from a set of something he was working on and there was one other person in there.
“You had no idea what part you were auditioning for, we didn’t know how many parts there were.”
After months of shooting together, often underwater, the young men are clearly very comfortable together but Styles is the more outgoing of the two, jumping out of his seat to offer kisses on each cheek.
“Thanks for having us,” he says in his Cheshire accent. “Thanks for coming. Where have you travelled from?”
This disarming charm will be no surprise to the fans who have followed Styles’ every move for years, obsessing over his romantic entanglements and sending his solo music to the top of the charts.
But for someone who has achieved so much so young, he says it was “overwhelming” when he first arrived on the Dunkirk set – on the beach where the evacuation took place in 1940.
He added: “I think as much as you can imagine what something like that is going to look like, people just don’t make that. I don’t know in what other situation someone gets to do what he [Nolan] did so he was pretty amazing to be around.
“You are kind of in awe of it a lot of the time, just continuously during the film.
“At times the tide would go out and you could see ruins of some of the old boats that were out there and it was moments like that when everyone was aware of how special the place that we were was.”
Whitehead added: “On reflection, the most incredible thing about the set, and there were loads of things, like the Spitfires flying overhead, was the fact that they recreated the mole [a stone breakwater pier].
“It’s been ruined by bombings and weather and the fact they went and built it, half a kilometre out into the sea, it was insane. It was a crazy thing to be a part of.”
And for Styles, the time on set gave him the chance to get an acting bootcamp from the best British actors working today.
“Any time you’re around people you’re a fan of, you just kind of try to soak up as much of that as possible and watching them work is a privilege.” He was particularly bowled over to be making his acting debut in a Nolan film, having loved the director since his 2000 movie Memento, starring Guy Pearce.
“I think I always found his structure so interesting and in terms of the way he keeps stuff from the audience when the characters don’t know about it and it hits you so much harder,” Styles said.
“You always feel like you’re right alongside the character, rather than watching stuff happening to them.”
So with one film under his belt, the world is waiting to see if there are any more to come.
He is about to embark on an extensive tour to support his debut solo album so if he does act again, it won’t be for a while.
But right now, he says: “I might be one and done, I think I’m one and done, to be honest. I think so.”
Watch this space. ● Dunkirk is released in UK cinemas on July 21.