Channing Tatum Unlocked

Shia LaBeouf :: It's pretty nuts, dude. So who is the actor you would model yourself after?
CT :: I love Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason.
SL :: You remind me of Mark Wahlberg.
CT :: I've always loved that guy—even when he was Marky Mark.

So how did a rebellious jock who once spurned the drama club before become the street-fighting surprise of Sundance?  Introducing shock 'em, sock 'em indie surprise, actor/model Channing Tatum.  Full resolution scan of 25-year-old Channing Tatum from Interview Magazine April 2006 in the gallery.  Read the full interview after the jump.

Channing Tatum

By: Shia LaBeouf

One of the few discoveries at this year's Sundance Film Festival was a dark, chiseled one delivered in the form of Channing Tatum, who co-stars alongside Robert Downey Jr., Chazz Palminteri, Dianne Wiest, and Shia LaBeouf in the award-winning competition drama A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. Based on writer-director Dito Montiel's 2003 autobiographical book of the same name, the film chronicles the tragic events of the last summer that Montiel (played by LaBeouf in his younger incarnation and by Downey Jr. as an adult) spent in his native Astoria, Queens— which, in the mid-1980s theater of street violence wherein much of the movie's action occurs, was a place many residents either clung to with a religious fervor or longed to escape with reckless abandon. Tatum's performance as Montiel's childhood friend, agitator, and protector Antonio is a scab-encrusted, bare-chested, short-fused revelation. The timing couldn't have been better for the 26-year-old Alabama-born, Florida-bred actor, who had previously tried his hand at construction, real-estate brokering, and modeling. He just wrapped production on an as-yet-untitled film about a juvenile delinquent, who finds himself through dancing, and also appears in the new comedy She's the Man, a modern remake of William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night starring Amanda Bynes.

SHIA LABEOUF :: You're blowin up right now, son. You've got some projects in the can already that are pretty good quality.
CHANNING TATUM :: Yeah, they kind of jump around everywhere, man. They go from beating up people on the streets of Astoria to dancing to Shakespeare.
SL :: Tell me about the Shakespeare thing.
CT :: It's basically a remake of Twelfth Night. It's a teen type of comedy. Amanda Bynes is hysterical. She's just got her own cute little charisma, and she's got a huge following. In order to play soccer at school, Amanda's character impersonates a guy. I don't know if you know Twelfth Night at all, but I play Orsino. It's pretty funny.
SL :: It must have been strange for you to start acting, because you come from a different type of world. You were a model. Why did you want to get into movies?
CT :: I don't know. You just can't do that much as a model. It's all two-dimensional. Every once in a while, you'll get a photographer who allows you to do something cool, like show an emotion or do some kind of activity. But you just get to pour so much more of yourself into a movie role. I've always loved movies but everyone loves movies, so I never conceived of the fact that I could actually be in them. In high school I had some friends in the drama department, but they were just doing plays, and I was like, "Eh, I don't really think that that's me." [laughs] So I just played sports. Then, a bunch of years later, I'm acting.
SL :: Are you trying to do something that nobody's done, or do you have a plan?
CT ::Nah. I don't even have a stance on what I think people have done or on what I would try to do differently.
SL :: Well, you've got to make some stuff up because people are going to ask you that, so you've got to have something interesting to say. I mean, to play a character like Antonio [in A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints] is such a rare opportunity.
CT :: He was supernatural.
SL :: I feel like you have the hardest job in the movie, just because of what came with playing him. When we would walk around the neighborhood in Astoria and talk to people, it was like Antonio was so popular. Everyone knew who he was.
CT :: It was nerve-racking a little bit, to meet his brother and his sister. But I always said that I wasn't really trying to be Antonio. I was just trying to be a guy who could have a relationship with your character like the friendship he and Dito had. We took these real people and we had to make them real onscreen. That was our biggest challenge.
SL ::  Well,  you  must  have  some  issues, because I don't know where else Antonio came from. [Tatum laughs] Your parents are still married, right?
CT :: Yeah, they're still married.
SL :: So, it's not that.
CT :: No, I mean, everybody's got their own problems. A lot of Antonio's anger was definitely pulled from back in the day.
SL :: It's pretty nuts, dude. So who is the actor you would model yourself after?
CT ::: I love Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason.
SL :: You remind me of Mark Wahlberg.
CT :: I've always loved that guy—even when he was Marky Mark.