He’s the leading man in Hollywood’s most visible dance franchise, “Step Up,” but before he joined the cast, Ryan Guzman hadn’t taken a single dance class.
“My first dance lesson was ‘Step Up Revolution,’ ” the 26-year-old says. “But being raised in a Latin household, dance was an important part of your upbringing.”
As a matter of fact, that led to one particularly awkward high school memory.
“It was my very first high school dance. Throughout my whole life I’d only done Latin dancing, and when I heard hip-hop, I started trying to do the salsa,” he says. “People [were] coming up to me and being like, ‘Dude, what are you doing? All we do is hip thrusting.’ ”
As the star of “Step Up All In,” opening Friday, Guzman has certainly learned how to get those hips moving. Reprising his role from the previous film, Guzman heads to Las Vegas for the fifth edition, where he and his co-stars will battle it out for street dance glory.
Guzman’s hoping the “Step Up” series will do for him what it’s done for Channing Tatum — make him a legitimate movie star. It seems that’s already in the works.
In 2016, he’ll play Rio in the big-screen adaptation of “Jem and the Holograms.” Next year — in January — he’ll star opposite Jennifer Lopez in “The Boy Next Door,” a thriller in which he hooks up with the much older, emotionally vulnerable Lopez. Yep, there’s a sex scene.
“It’s definitely not all passion and love and craziness on set. It’s choreographed to a T, he says, adding with a laugh, “I mean, you’re naked, so it’s kind of weird looking up and seeing 10 dudes looking straight back at you.”