Christopher Nolan On Why Harry Styles Was Cast In ‘Dunkirk’

Dunkirk will mark the debut of Harry Styles as an actor, but there were questions as to why he was picked in the first place. If it wasn’t Christopher Nolan, then it would be easy to assume that he was there just for star power. However, Nolan recently gave the LA Times his actual reason for picking such a high profile star — and it had nothing to do with his popularity.

“When we put the cast together, we had some established names: Kenneth Branagh, Mark Rylance, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy. But for the guys on the beach, we really wanted young unknowns. He’s not that unknown, but he’d never done anything as an actor before. So he auditioned. I auditioned literally thousands of young men with different combinations of young men. And he had it.”

It’s somewhat humorous that Nolan refers to Harry Styles as an “unknown” but I think his point is understood. It’s nice to know that Styles was chosen because of his apparent chemistry on screen and his acting chops as opposed to a pretty face. The LA Times interviewer attempted to get Nolan to talk more about Styles by asking about getting his hair cut for the role, but Nolan was not interesting in going down that hole. He just responded with “I don’t want to get into it.”

The interview also revealed how the Batman films have affected Nolan’s filmmaking and why he decided on the story of Dunkirk for his next film. As for the Batman trilogy, Nolan said:

I think the time I spent making large scale entertainment — with respect to entertainment, this is suspenseful entertainment. My 10 years of working with the character [of Batman] is essential to understanding imagery and sound, and push-and-pull in a particular direction.

Read the full interview here. Are you excited to see Harry Styles prove himself on the big screen? Do you think Dunkirk will be as successful as the previous Nolan films? Let us know in the comments!

Dunkirk hits theaters on July 21, 2017.

Source: LA Times (via Comicbook.com)