AceShowbiz -

Director Christopher Nolan has revealed an intriguing fact about One Direction's member Harry Styles, who will make an appearance in his upcoming movie "Dunkirk". In an interview with Los Angeles Times, Nolan divulged that Styles actually beat out thousands of young actors who auditioned for the role of a young soldier in the movie.

"When we put the cast together, we had some established names: Kenneth Branagh, Mark Rylance, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy," said Nolan when he was asked about why he decided to cast Styles. Nolan added, "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."

To fit into the World War II setting in the movie, Styles had to chop off his long hair, which used to be his trademark. Styles admitted that he felt 'naked' after his hair was cut. "I felt very naked. When I first told my parents I was going to be in a World War II film, they thought that I was playing a lady on the train station waving the soldiers off, so we had to make the chop," he said. He didn't regret it though, as he said, "But it was good! It's very breezy."

"Dunkirk" follows the story of a massive evacuation of Allied troops from French seaport Dunkirk during World War II. The movie is set to be released in the U.S. on July 21.