Interview

The story of Channing Tatum seems to reinforce the validity of the spectacular arc of life in movies. Take, for example, this brief rundown of essential plot points so far: He is born in a small town (Cullman, Alabama); he overcomes his early outsider status to become a popular kid (and even winds up playing football); he gets into hip-hop dancing (after seeing a guy do head spins at a local club); he is discovered on the street (by a modeling agent); he gets cast in a critically acclaimed independent film (A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, 2006); he lands a part in a big studio film (Step Up, 2006); and he is tapped for unmitigated superstardom (at least a lot of people are betting on it). It doesn’t hurt that Tatum is—and, by all accounts, has always been—very good-looking. But watching him onscreen, it’s clear that his face and his good luck aren’t his most important assets.

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In his brief career, Tatum has shown a special aptitude for playing highly physical characters whose actions often articulate more than their words. In A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, Dito Montiel’s semi-autobiographical film about growing up in Queens in the mid-1980s, Tatum plays the loyal enforcer in a splintering crew of childhood friends, conveying a complex range of emotions—pride, disappointment, anger, love, betrayal—so thoroughly with the pitch of his shoulders, the angle of his brow, and the gait of his walk that you could probably watch the film with the sound off and still understand what’s happening from scene to scene. As a slam-dancing vandal in Step Up, he performs a sort of existential ballet of confusion and conflict. As a soldier who has returned from Iraq in Stop-Loss (2008), he radiates a kind of strength and solidarity with his posture. Now, if you asked Tatum about how he arrived at any of these acting choices, he would probably tell you that he never made them to begin with. He doesn’t seem to think and then do; he just does—which is the way he goes about business in the rest of his life as well.

The next few months are busy ones for the 29-year-old Tatum. He recently reunited with Montiel for Fighting, a film about underground grapplers, and he also plays Pretty Boy Floyd in Michael Mann’s highly anticipated John Dillinger film, Public Enemies, which is headlined by Johnny Depp and Christian Bale. But the Hollywood industrial complex seems to have bet the farm on G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Tatum plays the indomitable soldier Duke, who—as any fan of the ’80s cartoon series can tell you—is the embodiment of all that is right and good, and the unquestionable star of the show. The film co-stars Dennis Quaid, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Sienna Miller, Ray Park, Christopher Eccleston, and Tatum’s interviewer here, Marlon Wayans.