This is how Harry Styles is linked to the West Midlands

From Baby Boomers to Gen Z’ers, everyone knows who Harry Styles is - but not a lot of people know that the 28-year-old award-winning, chart-topping musician, fashion icon, and actor had his humble beginnings in the West Midlands.

While there is no shortage of great musicians whose beginnings are in the region - including Ozzy, Osbourne, UB40, Robert Plant, Jamelia - for the younger generation Styles is likely to be one of the best known.

The versatile performer has become a leading man in feature films since rising to fame with the boy band One Direction. And he’s just beaten Beyoncé to win Album of the Year at the Grammy’s. However, his career started as a solo act in The X Factor - and he was initially rejected by the judging panel featuring Simon Cowell.

Judges Cowell, Louis Walsh and Nicole Scherzinger asked Styles to join other solo performers - Liam Payne, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, and Louis Tomlinson to form the band.

Simon Cowell told Rolling Stone magazine: “[Harry] did a great first audition, and then we have a second stage of the competition where we have to narrow the numbers down to 32 from, say, 200, and for whatever reason, all five of them screwed up a section of that particular part of the competition.

“With him, I think we put it down to his age, etc., and that’s why he didn’t go though, but, at the same time, as we said no to them, there was a part of me going, ‘We can’t lose them, we gotta do something with them.’”

When Styles joined One Direction, his career took off and after six years (2010-2016) of smashing succhess as a boy band, he went back to having a solo career.

Styles, whose net worth was $120m in 2022, is the richest musician under 30 in the UK. The Watermelon Sugar singer is the son of Anne Twist and Desmond “Des” Styles and was born in Redditch in 1994. However, the family moved to Cheshire when Harry was a child. Twist was a landlady and Des a finance worker.

The singer and his family may have moved from Redditch, but the Worcestershire town holds him close to their heart. They wanted to honour the singer and the community had called for a statue of him - which, sadly, never came to fruition.

Harry Styles filmography

Styles was seen in the MCU movie Eternals and is expected to have a bigger role in the franchise. Marvel executive Nate Moore told Deadline: “No, we certainly didn’t cast Harry for a tag but there are more stories to be told with that character, which is fascinating. He’s got a very interesting connection with Thanos, they’re half-brothers, they share the same father.

“He has an interesting power set. He’s a complicated character, but a really fun character.”

He made his debut in movies with Dunkirk in 2017 and has gone on to feature in prominent roles in Don’t Worry Darling and My Policeman. And now, fans are excited to see how big of a role he plays in the MCU franchise - which has an ensemble cast.

Other celebrities from Redditch

One of the other famous names from Redditch are John Bonham (1948–1980), musician with Led Zeppelin, science fiction writer Lionel Britton (1887–1971), and Duran Duran’s John Taylor, and actor Charles Dance among others.

Dance, 76, played the villanous Tywin Lannister in hugely-successful TV series Game of Thrones (2011–2015) until his character was killed off.

Best things to do in Redditch

Redditch was the 19th century hub of needle and fish tackle industry. If you want to learn more about them, you can visit the Forge Mill Needle Museum which illustrates the rich heritage of the two industries.