channing tatum connection
|
 The Vow (2012)
21 Jump Street (2012)
Haywire (2012)
The Son of No One (2011)
Dear John (2010)
Fighting (2009)
Stop-Loss (2008)
Step Up (2006)
She's The Man (2006)
|
 A few short years ago, Channing Tatum was a young man who was unsure what he wanted to do with his life. Now, thanks to the portal of a seemingly innocent dance film, he is on the cusp of stardom.Channing Tatum is living life in the fast line these days. A virtual unknown in Park City back in January, he is now a tween and teen poster boy, thanks to his roles in She's the Man and Step Up. Now comes Dito Montiel's autobiographical drama A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, winner of the Director's Prize and a Special Jury Award for ensemble acting at this year's Sundance Film Festival.
Yet, during a interview with FilmStew at Sundance, Tatum insists, "I don't really have so much like a career plan, as like, 'I'm going to do a really gritty movie, then I'm going to do a commercial movie.' I have no interest in doing something just for the simple fact of getting my face out there or doing a commercial movie. Every character I have to like."
The 26-year-old Alabama native, a former model, is elegantly dressed for the interview, sporting a navy pinstripe suit over a lavender shirt that is left casually unbuttoned at the collar. And while he may not have a specific strategy, he will allow that some calculation did go into his decision to make the critically reviled She's the Man. "[That] was probably the only thing I was doing to try get into a different bracket. People just won't hire you for their film if you don't have any name or face value or anything like that."
Whatever he is doing in terms of steering his career, so far it seems to be working. She's the Man was a minor hit, while Step Up, in its first weekend, exceeded box office expectations to land firmly in second place. And the reviews for his performance in Saints as Montiel’s best friend, the mercurial and violent Antonio, are the kind of notices that most actors dream about. Not bad for someone who only took up acting relatively recently after his modeling work led to commercials for Mountain Dew and Pepsi in 2002. It has only been two and a half years since he received his first credit for a 2004 guest spot on CSI: Miamilowed by his feature film debut in 2005's Coach Carter.
When Tatum starred in Step Up as a troubled teen who is sentenced to community service at a performing arts high school, it reminded him that growing up, he never realized these types of institutions even existed. "When I found out about these art schools, it was kind of like, 'What? Why didn't I get informed of this?” he says with a laugh. “I want to go to an art school!' Like I was upset, I was truly upset."
“But who knows? I'm here, so maybe if I went to art school, I wouldn't be doing this. I'd be stock brokering or something. Burnt out at 16, 'I can't dance anymore; I can't paint anymore.'"
Tatum was no juvenile delinquent himself growing up. He was a high school football star who went to college on a football scholarship, but he asserts, “Tyler [in Step Up] was exactly me. I had no idea what to do with my life, at all, except I was good at football. I didn't even know if that's what I wanted to do, but I was good at it."
He stopped playing once he got into college and realized that his love for the game was not there anymore. It had become a job to work at in order to keep a scholarship. Clueless about what to do next, he worked at all kinds of jobs. "I tried everything from framing houses to working in a puppy and kitty nursery to phone marketing, phone soliciting. What else did I do? Worked in sales. I just tried so many different things, because I had no idea what I wanted to do," he admits.
But he loved to dance, so when he met a girl who worked with inner-city hip-hop kids, he warmed to the idea. He moved to Miami and got a job doing the same thing, but quickly realized he would not be able to pay his bills on the low pay. The move eventually paid off when he was spotted on a Miami street and recruited for modeling.
Tatum went on to grace ads for, among others, The Gap, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Emporio Armani and has been featured in magazines such as Vogue, L'Uumo and Flaunt. Modeling gave him the opportunity to travel all around the world and it led to the commercial spots that would eventually bring him to acting.
Going into Step Up, Tatum identified with Tyler in another way. While he is a talented and athletic street performer, he is not a trained dancer. Step Up required him to work with a choreographer, Jamal Sims (as well as choreographer-turned-director Anne Fletcher), and a whole cast of pros, principally Dewan, a dancer from the age of five who has toured with Janet Jackson, performed in a host of music videos, and recently appeared in the Antonio Banderas-starring Take the Lead.
"The whole dance, it was just tailoring it to what I could do, because we didn't use any dance doubles whatsoever,” he recalls. “It was all about where my limitations could take me and we pushed it.”
“I learned a lot of just dancing in general, but it was pretty intimidating,” he continues. “It was intimidating to say the least, and when we would do these big productions, I had never danced with anyone else before. Even when we were training, it was all just me and Jamal learning the dance, then he threw me into this big [production], everyone's dancing around me. I just fell apart; I couldn't focus."
Next up for Tatum is a role as Ryan Phillippe's best friend in Kimberly Peirce's currently untitled drama about the Army's stop loss program. "It's basically like a backdoor draft. It's like a draft inside the military," he says. "They come home and they spend all their money, investing like in businesses and stuff, thinking that they're done, then they get the call that they're going back. Against their will – if they don't go back, they go to prison for desertion."
The boy who didn't know what he wanted to do with his life is looking at a bright future. Like Tyler Gage, things started looking up the moment he discovered the artist within, in Tatum's case, it was in his first acting workshop. "It was a religious experience," he marvels. "Within the first five minutes of it, it was like the heavens opened up and I found my calling. It was crazy.”
“I felt like I won the lottery, it was so moving. I cried; I laughed; it was just one of those things where you go, 'Wow! This is it!'"
|
|
Check out Feed Central XML Sitemap HTML Sitemap Privacy Policy
