Harry Styles Talks Getting into Character for 'My Policeman'

Fresh off attending the Venice Film Festival premiere of "Don't Worry Darling," Harry Styles chatted at the Toronto International Film Festival about getting into character for his other big role: A closeted gay policeman in 1950s London.

Styles theorized that not only does his character, Tom, have to navigate the paradox of being an officer of the law at a time when simply being who he is has been criminalized; he also has to open his mind to new possibilities of all sorts as he adjusts to life in London after growing up in a comparatively small town.

Variety quoted Styles as saying that Tom is "curious" enough to start pressing past what he always assumed was "where the edge of the world is."

"Slowly throughout the story, I think he's realizing that it is a little further away than Brighton," Styles said. "I think people live entire lives in very small bubbles like that, and if that's how you've been brought up, and everyone around you and generations before you, your parents, etc. have all lived within their kind of small bubble, it's obviously very difficult to even picture the world outside of that."

Tom meets a gay museum curator who is much more cultured, and who "feeds his curiosity," Styles related. But he also clings to a facade of heteronormativity in marrying a female school teacher in whom "he also finds ultimately a friend who is the most accepting of him, and I think that's why, kind of regardless of whichever way you think on their relationship, I think their friendship is incredibly real and loving and tender."

The Hollywood Reporter noted that Styles also spoke to the theme of a person losing years of his life rather than embracing authenticity.

"For me, the reason why the story is so devastating is that, ultimately, the whole story is about wasted time, and I think wasted time is the most devastating thing," Styles commented, going on to note that time is "the one thing you can't have back. And I think the one thing that I think matters – whatever kind of life you've lived – at the end when you think back on time with people you love."

Set in part decades later, the three characters are played in their older years "by Linus Roache, Rupert Everett and Gina McKee," THR noted. Their past actions leave them "reeling with regret" late into their lives, but even so the three "seek to repair the damage done 40 years earlier."

"I think the most beautiful thing about the story is that all of the characters have some really nice qualities, and they also have some flaws," THR quoted Styles as saying. "And I think, at different points in the story, you're able to see bits of yourself, and sometimes maybe not your favorite parts of yourself, in different characters. And I think that's why it kind of resonated with me so much."

Styles also took note of how forces in the present are working to roll back the clock and strip hard-won freedoms from LGBTQ+ people.

"For the very first time in my lifetime, I think it's fragile again," Styles said of the movement toward full legal equality for LGBTQ+ people. "And I think this will alert people, hopefully even educate people and certainly remind people, that if you let it be fragile and let it go backward, this is where you get to. You get to a place where people cannot be themselves and cannot be free."

"My Policeman," an Amazon Studios production, will be in theaters Oct. 21, before it moves to streaming on Prime Video Nov. 4.