Liam Payne, Former One Direction Member, Dead at 31

Directioners are saying goodbye to Liam Payne.

The former One Direction bandmate died after falling from the third floor of a hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina, according to Good Morning America and CNN, citing police. He was 31. 

Two hours before news broke, Payne shared a photo on Snapchat of himself with girlfriend Kate Cassidy in swim gear as they smiled for a mirror selfie.

Payne rose to fame in 2010 when he was grouped with Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik to form One Direction on The X Factor. While the band finished third place, they went on to see massive success starting with their debut single “What Makes You Beautiful” as part of their debut album Up All Night in 2011. 

However, Payne was candid about the difficulties of becoming a celebrity so young in life. 

“Fame made me a little bit nuts and distracted me a lot from the person I was,” he told #Legend magazine in 2018. “And it pissed me off in the end, because it was like, ‘You could have been this guy, but you chose to do this.’ Nobody really knew anything about me. I put on a front that wasn’t really me.”