Currently an actor, also a film producer, and once a porn star, Channing Tatum started out as a fashion model that has appeared in Mountain Dew and Pepsi commercials. Today, his is best known for playing a prominent role in movies as Coach Carter (2005), the sports drama; She’s the Man (2006); Step Up (2006), Fighting (2009); Public Enemies (2009); GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009); and his most recent movie: Dear John (2010).
Tatum’s Childhood
Born April 26, 1980, Channing Matthew Tatum was the son of Kay, an airline worker and Glenn, a construction worker. Tatum had an ancestry of French, Irish, and Native American. At age six, his family moved from his birth place, Cullman, Alabama to Mississippi, a rural area in a bayou close to the Mississippi River, where he grew up.
He attended high school at Gaither High School in Tampa, Florida and later, Catholic High School in that same city. During his adolescent years he engaged in a number of sports including baseball, football, martial arts (as kung fu), soccer, and track. After he graduated in 1998, he was awarded a football scholarship in which he would attend Glenville State College in West Virginia. He rejected it and returned home to work various jobs.
1999-2003
Using the alias “Chan Crawford”, Tantum worked as an exotic dancer in a nearby nightclub. He then wanted to star in a movie that would tell his experiences as a stripper. He told an Australian newspaper “I've already got the director picked out. I'd like Nicolas Refn, who did the movie ‘Bronson’, to do it because I’m insane for it."
Tatum starred as a dancer in the “She Bangs” music video, a song by Ricky Martin earning $400 for the job in 2000. He was chosen as one of the “50 Most Beautiful Faces” in Tear Sheet magazine in the fall of 2001. A year later, he appeared in Mountain Dew and Pepsi commercials. Later he worked in a modeling agency in Miami where he was published in Vogue and other magazines. He also joined the Beatrice Model agency in Milan Italy and Ford Models in New York City.
2004–2007
Along with his desire in art, writing, and modeling, he also loved acting. Tatum was chosen for an acting role in the TV series CSI: Miami in 2004. In 2005 he starred as a basketball player, Jason Lyle in the movie Coach Carter. In that movie the rapper Twista produced a music video called Hope, which Tatum appeared in. Later that year, Tatum played as a motor cross racer in Supercross, then an uncredited role in War of the Worlds, and in Havoc as a part of the supporting cast. At this point in life, Tatum said he preferred making adult oriented films over modeling.
She’s the Man was a big box office hit bringing in $57 million since it opened March of 2006. In this flick he played Duke, a boyfriend of Viola Hastings, starring Amanda Bynes. Later that year, Tatum acted in a dance theme romance called Step Up. In this film he was a rebellious hip-hop dancer and a partner to a ballerina, Jenna Dewan. Even earning more in its first weekend, $114 million worldwide was a bigger hit yet. A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints followed in late 2006, based on a 1980’s set drama where he played Antonio, a boy on the streets of Astoria, Queen whom resorted to solving problems through violence. He later received an Independent Spirit Award as “Best Supporting Actor.”
He began dating Jenna Dewan after the Step Up was finished filming. They became engaged in September of 2008 in Maui, Hawaii, and got married in Malibu, California at the Church Estate Vineyards on July 11, 2009.
2008–Present
He also co-starred in the Stop-Loss, a film directed by Kimberly Pierce, based on the ending of the Iraq War as soldiers returned back home. Battle in Seattle soon followed, directed by Stuart Townsend based on a protest of a meeting held in Seattle regarding the World Trade Organization in 1999. Succeeding was The Trap, an Indie film directed by Rita Wilson. His most recent effort is The Vow, a movie that opened in February of 2012.
Tatum quotes: “I got crazy lucky. Like, sometimes I think I won the lottery or something. At times it feels like the bottom's gonna fall out. Just 'cause I don't really know how I got here. But I just keep moving forward, and it just keeps getting better and better.”
No doubt, the man known with the shaved head has had an extremely active career starring in numerous films. What will he do in the approaching years? Only time will tell.
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