Harry Styles has Chloe Zhao to thank for his cameo in Eternals

Chloé Zhao pushed for Harry Styles to be cast in 'Eternals'.

The 39-year-old director was certain that the former One Direction star would be a perfect fit for the cameo role of Starfox in the Marvel movie and mentioned it to studio president Kevin Feige "every chance" she got.

She said: "Long story short, with that depressing ending, at some point he was going to be one of the Eternals on that ship.

"And that didn't quite work out.

"But I had been wanting to bring Eros into the MCU.

"So I kept mentioning [casting Harry Styles] to Kevin [Feige] at every chance I had in the hallway, because I love the idea of Eros being another Eternal, another Ajak. He's an Eternal, and he was stationed on Titan – 10 of them were, just like the 10 Eternals on Earth, assuming Titan is also a host planet at some point.

"Now, if you think about that, what influence could Eros have had on the inhabitants of Titan, the way Ajak has influenced people on Earth? And how that has affected Thanos."

The acclaimed filmmaker went on to explain that the casting of the 'Watermelon Sugar' hitmaker was synonymous with the character of Eros and they used his backstory as a way to convince Kevin to cast the pop star.

She told Empire: "the backstory of Eros is that he deserted, he said, 'I'm not doing this anymore.'

"So he somehow got that sphere, which you saw in his hand, and he ran off and made Pip the troll. They're like Han Solo and Chewie.

"Arishem's been looking for him, and he's just been a space outlaw. That's the character I had in my mind. But I never said once to Kevin, 'Here's the character. Let's find an actor.' For me, it was a package deal. It's got to be Harry. That's how I pitched it to Kevin."