All you need to know about Channing Tatum is contained in his reaction to being told he was People’s Sexiest Man Alive last fall: “Y’all are messing with me!”
A lot of Hollywood folks might have said something similar if you’d told them a few years ago that this roofer-turned stripper-turned-model-turned-actor would have one of the most meteoric film careers in the business. But there’s just something about that Channing charm.
No, he’s not the best actor money can buy. He’s not even the handsomest. (The site Buzzfeed has dubbed him a “gyrating human potato.”) What he does bring to each role is an ease with himself and a sense of humor that makes you want to be his best friend. Or maybe his best friend with benefits.
“He doesn’t put on airs,” says Michael Sucsy, who directed Tatum in last year’s February romance “The Vow,” opposite Rachel McAdams. “He is who he is. He’s a lot of fun, and he works hard.”
In that movie, about a wife with amnesia, a less likable actor might have tipped the balance into too-precious melodrama. Tatum delivers even the cheesiest lines with sweetness and humility.
“He has a heart that’s bigger than his chest,” says Sucsy. “And he won’t just do something, it has to feel authentic.”
Just months after “The Vow,” in “21 Jump Street,” Tatum defied expectations and pulled off a comic performance that nearly upstaged veteran comic actor Jonah Hill. He followed that up with a starring role in “Magic Mike,” Steven Soderbergh’s adaptation of Tatum’s exotic-dancer past.
Post-“Mike,” he pulled the rug out from under the industry again with a small role in Soderbergh’s “Side Effects,” out now. This from a demonstrable leading man? Why would he make such an uncalculated move?
“He’s super excited [about acting],” says director Dito Montiel, who’s featured Tatum in three of his movies: “A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints,” “Fighting” and “The Son of No One.”
“We’re similar types — we find it hard to believe we’re making movies for a living,” Montiel says.
“Saints,” in 2006, was one of Tatum’s first major roles, and Montiel recalls meeting the tall, muscle-bound actor for the first time as he was trying to cast the role of a tough kid who’d been his friend as a kid in Astoria, Queens.
“He just reminded me of somebody I grew up with,” Montiel says. “I wrote the role about this Italian guy, who was impossible to look at, impossible to love, a troubled guy. And then Channing came, and I thought, ‘A male model from Alabama? He sounds like the polar opposite.’ But he has that thing where you really believe him. He can get away with things that some people can’t. And he had a kind of fierceness behind it all. There aren’t a lot of people that I’d believe could throw me through a wall.”
And perhaps it’s that fierceness that’s fired Tatum’s ambitious career path — small Soderbergh roles aside — in which he’s formed his own production company, worked on smaller movies (the indie reunion drama “10 Years,” directed by “Dear John” writer Jamie Linden) and loyally returned to a cartoonish action movie franchise (“G.I. Joe: Retaliation,” out next month).
Reports say the new “G.I. Joe,” initially planned for release last summer, was delayed so that Tatum’s role could be expanded to take advantage of his new profile, and because nominal stars Bruce Willis and Dwayne Johnson weren’t holding the picture together. Producers, though, have insisted his reshoots were minimal, and that they really just wanted to spend time getting the 3-D conversion right.
Either way, it all speaks to a guy who seems equally focused on doing right by others in the industry and carving out a place for himself as a highly versatile performer.
“I think Channing is having a great moment, one that could very well last for quite some time when it comes to box office with action movies, action comedies and romances,” says a Hollywood casting agent.
“What I think he’s lacking is the ability to take on Oscar fare like ‘Born on the Fourth of July.’ I think it’s work like that that has kept Tom Cruise, Will Smith, Brad Pitt, etc., full-fledged global movie stars decade after decade,” the agent says.
“I don’t think Channing has the acting chops to do what those guys have been able to accomplish.”
That may be. And yet, consider the range of what he’s got coming up in the next year or two: He’ll play a Secret Service agent in the Roland Emmerich action thriller “White House Down,” and Olympic wrestler Mark Schultz in a movie called “Foxcatcher” from the director of “Moneyball.” Those will be followed by parts in the Peter Pan fantasy adventure “Neverland,” a sci-fi movie by the Wachowskis called “Jupiter Ascending” and — inevitably — “21 Jump Street 2.”
As the actor himself recently said, “Big actors have told me to get it while the getting is good. Grind it.”
We concur.