Channing Tatum has impressive dancing skills and superstar acting chops, but how was he first discovered?
Tatum made his film debut in 2005’s Coach Carter at age 24. While the film was a success, it was his roles in 2006’s She’s the Man and Step Up that put him on the map. Step Up director Anne Fletcher knew that Tatum was the perfect person for the role of Tyler Gage, even though the actor did not have any formal dance training.
“Early on, we got a call from Channing’s agent, saying, ‘You need to meet this guy. He’s read the script, he identifies with the character and he knows exactly who this guy is.’ The immediate response to that was, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure,’” she recalled to Cosmopolitan in August 2016. “You hear that stuff all the time. But we took the meeting, and when we met with him, he started doing some arm hip-hop choreography, literally at the table, and at that moment, I was like, ‘We’re done. We’ve found our guy.’”
Fletcher continued, “We had no idea if he could act. But he was super handsome, super charming and he could dance. He’d trained himself, so it was messy and sloppy and [off] the street. He was perfect. Thank God he came out of nowhere. Literally, thank God.”
Channing Tatum is bracing himself for the first time his daughter watches Magic Mike. During the Wednesday, August 21, episode of Late Night With Seth Meyers, the Blink Twice star, 44, opened up about preparing for the day that Everly, 11, sees his dance moves in the steamy comedy/drama trilogy. The topic of conversation came […]
Scroll below to learn more about how Tatum was discovered before becoming a top Hollywood star.
Channing Tatum’s History With Dancing and Stripping
Tatum was born in Cullman, Alabama, in 1980. After his family moved to Florida and he graduated high school, Tatum planned to pursue higher education and play football. Ultimately, he decided college just wasn’t for him and dropped out.
“I didn’t really grow up educated. But I work every single day to get better, to educate myself as much as I possibly can,” he told The Los Angeles Times in February 2011. “People don’t understand how hard [actors] work and how good we want to be.”
Channing Tatum Kayla Oaddams/FilmMagic
Tatum heard an ad on the radio looking to hire dancers at a Miami nightclub. He decided to audition with his friends in front of an all-female audience and ended up getting the job in 1999.
“They were like, ‘All right, ladies, these are our newbies. We’re thinking about hiring ’em. What do you think?’” Tatum told Vanity Fair in June 2013. “They put on a song, and we danced.”
How Did Channing Tatum Learn How to Dance?
Tatum’s got some killer moves on the dance floor, but that wasn’t always the case.
“I was a tall, skinny white kid from Florida and I couldn’t dance with any of the Spanish girls at the quinceañeras,” he once told James Corden of learning to dance. “I just had to grab an abuela and be like, ‘You’ve got to help.’ And she did.”
Tatum also shared that he picked up on dance moves while enjoying the Miami nightlife.
“I mostly learned to dance by hanging out in clubs and grinding on girls,” he told Esquire in November 2014. “Women, cars, alleys. Fun one night, then ugly, too.”
In 2000, Tatum got the opportunity to appear in Ricky Martin’s music video for the song “She Bangs,” playing a bartender. Martin revealed how the job came to be for Tatum.
“I think he said thank you for the first opportunity,” the singer said during a March 2024 episode of Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen. “In Miami, I just told the people from the production of the video to go out scouting and invite everybody to the Bahamas. And that’s what happened, and there he was.”
Friendly exes! Jenna Dewan and Channing Tatum reunited to support their daughter, Everly, at a recent dance competition. The Rookie actress, 42, shared a short video from the event on Tuesday, May 23, that showed her and the Magic Mike’s Last Dance star, 43, cheering on their 8-year-old. Dewan’s mom, Nancy Lee Bursch, was also […]
Channing Tatum’s Modeling Days Were Full of Opportunity
A burst of luck came Tatum’s way in the early 2000s, when he was approached by a man while walking down the streets of Miami, asking him if he had “representation” or if he was interested in modeling. Tatum decided to take the man’s advice and visit a modeling agency a few days later.
He was quickly signed, finding almost immediate success in the fashion industry with an array of projects with Abercrombie, Nautica, American Eagle, Dolce & Gabbana, Armani and more. Eventually, Tatum decided to take acting classes in New York and appeared in several commercials before landing his first credited role on the big screen in 2005’s Coach Carter.
One year later, Tatum appeared alongside now-ex-wife, Jenna Dewan, in Step Up. (The pair were married from 2009 to 2019 and share a daughter, Everly, born in 2013.) Tatum admitted that he and Dewan both cringed when they watched the dance-centric film together years later.
“Me and Jenna just saw Step Up on TV, and we watched it for two seconds,” he told Vanity Fair in July 2015. “We made that 10 years ago or something. It was hard because you’re like, ‘Wow, I remember it being so much better.’ Then other times you’re like, ‘I remember it being worse.’”
He continued, “Things happen that change your perspective. Not just your opinion but your windshield, your lens. Like you put on a 50-mm. [lens], then take that 50 off and put on a 16. Now you can see so much more, but you’re missing the little things. I think for a while I’m going to try to make movies that, even if they don’t make a dollar, I’ll still be so proud to be a part of them that it won’t matter.”
Is ‘Magic Mike’ Based on Channing Tatum’s Life?
Among his film accolades is 2012’s Magic Mike, the Steven Soderbergh-directed comedy-drama starring Tatum, Alex Pettyfer, Matt Bomer, Joe Manganiello and Matthew McConaughey. The film chronicles a group of male strippers, some of whom get wrapped up in a drug scheme while balancing their nighttime jobs along with other future career aspirations.
Screenwriter Reid Carolin said Tatum’s own experience was a “jumping-off point” for the story, but that the plot itself is purely fictional, per E! News.
Tatum himself also addressed whether or not the events of Magic Mike were true, saying, “This is just a world that I went into, and I had a perspective on,” in June 2012, per The Hollywood Reporter, adding, “And we created everything from a fictional place.”
