BIOGRAPHY 2

 

Focus on Specific participants

Use of Action verbs

Explain something that the character is actively doing by using some verbs in V2 or Past Form.

Example:

Styles launched his own record label, Erskine Records, in May and he signed a recording contract with Columbia Records as a solo artist, the same label behind One Direction, in June.

Styles wrote the song “Someday” in collaboration with Meghan Trainor for Michael Bublé's album Nobody but Me, released in October.

Types of Biography

• Short Biography (focuses only on highlights of a person’s life)
• Long Biography (about life and times of someone in a lot more detail)

Harry Styles

Harry Edward Styles was born in Redditch, Worcestershire on 1 February 1994. He is the son of Anne Cox (née Selley) and Desmond “Des” Styles, who worked in finance. Many of his ancestors were farm laborers in Norfolk. Styles was raised in Holmes Chapel, Cheshire after his parents moved there along with his older sister, Gemma, when he was a child. He attended Holmes Chapel Comprehensive School. Styles’ parents divorced when he was seven and his mother later was remarried to Robin Twist; he died in 2017. He has an older stepbrother named Mike and a stepsister named Amy, children of Twist. As a sixteen-year-old, he worked part-time at the W. Mandeville Bakery in Holmes Chapel.

As a child, Styles loved singing, covering songs from Elvis Presley. While at Holmes Chapel Comprehensive, Styles was the lead singer for the band White Eskimo, which won a local Battle of the Bands competition. Styles has cited country singer Shania Twain as his “main influence” both musically and in fashion. He has also cited Pink Floyd, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, Harry Nilsson, Freddie Mercury, and Elvis Presley as being influences. His music contains elements of soft rock, pop, folk, rock, and Britpop.

Following a suggestion from his mother, on 11 April 2010, Styles auditioned as a solo candidate for the seventh series of the British televised singing competition The X Factor, singing a rendition of Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely”. He failed to progress to the “Boys” category at “judges’ houses”. Four others in his age group also failed, but at the suggestion by Nicole Scherzinger, a guest judge, they were put together as an ensemble at Wembley Arena in July 2010, during the “boot camp” stage of the competition, thus qualifying for the “Groups” category. The group consisting of Styles, Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, and Zayn Malik, got together for two weeks to get to know one another and practice. In 2017, Styles said he had suggested the name One Direction to his bandmates and they agreed to keep it.

For their qualifying song at “judges’ houses”, and their first song as a group, One Direction sang an acoustic version of “Torn”. Simon Cowell later commented that the performance convinced him that the group “were confident, fun, like a gang of friends, and kind of fearless as well.” Within the first four weeks of the live shows, they were Cowell’s last act in the competition. The group quickly gained popularity in the UK.

In 2016 to present, he has been busy with the solo album and acting debut. In February 2016, Styles left the group’s management company Modest Management and joined Jeffrey Azoff’s Full Stop Management. Styles launched his own record label, Erskine Records, in May and he signed a recording contract with Columbia Records as a solo artist, the same label behind One Direction, in June. Styles wrote the song “Someday” in collaboration with Meghan Trainor for Michael Bublé’s album Nobody but Me, released in October.

In March 2017, Styles announced his first solo single titled “Sign of the Times” and the song was released on 7 April, reaching number one on the UK Singles Chart. An accompanying music video for the song directed by Woodkid was also released, featuring Styles levitating and walking on water. The song was variously described by critics as pop rock and soft rock ballad with glam rock influences.

His self-titled debut album was released on 12 May 2017, whereupon it debuted at number one in several countries, including the UK, the US, and Australia. The record was heavily influenced by ’70s soft rock and was described by Variety as a “classic cocktail of psychedelia, Britpop, and balladry”. It received generally favorable reviews from critics and was included in several publications’ lists of the best albums of 2017.

Styles made his film debut in Christopher Nolan’s war film Dunkirk in July 2017, playing a British soldier named Alex who is a part of the Dunkirk evacuation in World War II. He appeared alongside actors Fionn Whitehead, Jack Lowden, Aneurin Barnard, Tom Hardy, Mark Rylance, Cillian Murphy, and Kenneth Branagh in the film.