Liam Payne Talked About What He Wishes He Could Tell His Younger Self About Being In One Direction

    "I was a man in a child's body pretty early on."

    Larry Fitzmaurice
    by Larry Fitzmaurice

    BuzzFeed Staff

    One Direction: Obviously, they were — and, to many, forever will be — kind of a big deal.

    One Direction at the 2014 iHeartRadio Music Festival red carpet
    James Atoa / Everett Collection

    In a recent interview with Glamour UK, former 1D member Liam Payne opened up regarding the advice he'd give his younger self about One Direction's meteoric rise to fame.

    Payne at a One Direction Good Morning America concert in 2013
    Derek Storm / Everett Collection

    Payne said that he'd tell himself to "just have more fun and relax a little bit": "I think I was a very serious child, one of those man-childs. I was a man in a child's body pretty early on."

    He continued, "And I think I would have avoided that stage, to be honest with you. To enter One Direction as that difficult, because it just meant that I got ... a different job to everybody else."

    After claiming that he "should have just larked around and thrown plates out the window and stuff," he got a bit more specific about just how wild he would've wanted to get — and when.

    "Well, I mean at the start, and then later on a bit less rock 'n' roll."

    Liam's not the only former 1D star who's been reflecting on the group's massive popularity. Niall Horan also recently reflected on how intense their fans often were.

    "I struggled with the idea of, 'Why won't you just let us out?'" he said. "We just want to go for a walk, you know?"

    Hindsight is, of course, 20/20 — but hey, all the more reason to live in the moment, too.