Inside Harry Styles’ mysterious life – love, sexuality and exes who inspired his songs
Despite his gargantuan levels of fame, former One Direction star Harry Styles likes to play his cards close to his chest…
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He’s arguably one of the biggest pop stars in the world, but remarkably little is known about the enigmatic Harry Styles.
Despite the fact the UK watched him grow up on The X Factor and later in One Direction, the Cheshire-raised 26 year old still manages to fly largely under the radar.
Far from sharing endless updates from far flung holidays or glitzy nights out, his Instagram is all business, while he uses his Twitter mainly to promote charities and causes he values.
The rest is largely unknown – and that’s just the way he wants it.
“With an artist like Prince, all you wanted to do was know more , ” he once explained to Rolling Stone.
“And that mystery – it’s why those people are so magical! Like, f**k, I don’t know what Prince eats for breakfast. That mystery… it’s just what I like.”
Another factor, according to those close to the star, is that Harry – who is the UK’s second richest young celebrity after Ed Sheeran, with an estimated net worth of £74million – simply isn’t that starry.
Something he would agree with. “It’s not about trying to make my career longer, like I’m trying to be this ‘mysterious character,’ because I’m not,” he told the magazine.
“When I go home, I feel like the same person I was at school. You can’t expect to keep that if you show everything. There’s the work and the personal stuff, and going between the two is my favorite sh*t. It’s amazing to me.”
He’s so low key that he famously lived on a mattress in the attic of a friend’s house in Hampstead Heath for the first 20 months of his career.
He then bought a £2.95 million, four-bedroom home in an exclusive residential road in north London in 2012 which he’s said to have kitted out with it’s own bar, aptly named ‘Harry’s Bar’.
After years of flitting between the UK and the US – where he reportedly owns a £6.7million loft apartment in Manhattan – last July he’s said to have bought a five-bedroom Georgian semi for £8.8million, again in north London.
According to Homes and Property, it’s a flamboyant pad to match his flamboyant style, with chandeliers, ornate cornicing, a curved staircase and a grand sitting room with floor-to-ceiling windows.
James Morton of Dexters estate agents told the website that Harry was more than likely attracted by the fact the property is somewhat hidden away.
“It’s a very exclusive, very prestigious address, quite quiet but maybe that’s what the joy of somewhere like that is,” he said.
“Somewhere to escape to but still very convenient for getting in and out of the centre of London.”
So does Harry have someone special to share his new home with? Again, his relationships are something the star keeps very close to his chest.
By his own admission, he’s always been a hopeless romantic – even as a 15-year-old schoolboy when he would make a three hour round train trip after his Saturday shift at the local bakery to see his first love.
“My first proper girlfriend used to have one of those laughs. There was also a little bit of mystery with her because she didn’t go to our school. I just worshipped the ground she walked on,” he told Rolling Stone. “And she knew, probably to a fault, a little. That was a tough one. I was 15.”
At the start of his career he dated Caroline Flack, but after a very public romance and breakup with Taylor Swift, 30, in 2012, Harry went to ground with his romances.
Not that he stopped dropping clues. His debut solo album is said to have been largely inspired by a relationship with model Kendall Jenner, 24 – something he has always refused to confirm or deny.
Without naming the woman in question, he said his ex had been a ‘huge part’ of the album, adding, “you hope they know it’s just for them.”
Meanwhile, his follow up, Fine Line, featured a voicemail from Victoria’s Secret model Camilla Rowe, 34, who he dated from 2017 to 2018. And on that occasion, Harry was happy to admit she had heavily influenced his song writing.
“When we listened back to the album, I asked her to add it in,” he told Zane Lowe of the voicemail which features on a track called Cherry.
“I think she liked [the song.] Cherry is about… I wanted it to reflect how I felt then. I was feeling not great. It’s all about being not great. Because, you get petty when things don’t go the way you want it. There’s parts that’s so pathetic.”
No reason was ever given for their split, but according to Harry’s friend and collaborator Tom Hull, it knocked him for six.
“He went through this breakup that had a big impact on him,” Hull said. “He had a whole emotional journey about her, this whole relationship. But I kept saying, ‘The best way of dealing with it is to put it in these songs you’re writing.’”
As for who he is dating currently, Harry was last linked to American-Japanese model Kiko Mizuhara, 28, in January 2019.
But he doesn’t just date celebrities. The cryptic singer made it clear in one interview that he dates a lot of un-famous people too. “You just don’t know about it,” he told the Guardian.
It was in that same interview that Harry addressed speculation about his sexuality.
Back in 2014 he declared gender wasn’t ‘that important’ when it came to dating before gyrating with half-clothed women and men in the video for his 2019 hit Lights Up.
Meanwhile, his 2018 song Medicine, got people talking with the lyrics: “The boys and the girls are here/ I mess around with him/ And I’m OK with it.”
Harry, however, insists he isn’t “sprinkling in nuggets of sexual ambiguity to try and be more interesting,” although he refuses to be labelled.
“It’s not like I’m sitting on an answer, and protecting it, and holding it back. It’s not a case of: I’m not telling you because I don’t want to tell you. It’s not: ‘ooh this is mine and it’s not yours,'” he told The Guardian.
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