Channing Tatum Reveals Why He Quit School to Become an Actor and Model and How He Ended Up Homeless
In an interesting interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the actor, dancer, and part-time stripper Channing Tatum revealed to the world how he became one of Hollywood’s most loved actors. Tatum discussed working on Magic Mike XXL, what it was like working with Steve Carell on Foxcatcher and teaming up with Jonah Hill.
But, one of the biggest surprises in the interview was what caused him to quit school and pursue strippping.
During one history class, he had that panic attack. “I had to walk out of the class because I was like, ‘I can’t imagine doing this for another four years. I can’t imagine sitting in this class or doing numbers on a board,’ ” he says. “It was a suffocating feeling of, ‘That’s what I’m going to have to do.’ That was really dark. ‘Where am I going to go? Where is this going to lead?’ And I really think I just started going down the rabbit hole [and] started stripping.”
Tatum would later quit school which would allow him to work on his modeling career.
Tatum left stripping and stumbled into work as a model when he was spotted by a scout and placed in ads for Abercrombie & Fitch, Pepsi and Mountain Dew. But in New York, struggling to get by, he was aware of how ephemeral that work could be and started thinking of other options. “You always are looking for something,” he says. “I mean, as a model you don’t [get paid much]. You can’t do it forever.”
Channing Tatum also revealed in the interview that he was homeless for several months while trying to become an actor.
He started taking acting lessons and auditioning, sleeping on people’s couches to survive, and by the time he was in his mid-20s, his career had taken off with such movies as 2005’s Havoc and 2006’s A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. Realizing he had to relocate to Los Angeles to further his career, he soon was cast in the 2006 dance movie Step Up, where he met Jenna Dewan. It was the beginning of an upward trajectory that hasn’t stopped, in which Tatum has defied naysayers who thought he was nothing more than beefcake — this era’s Victor Mature — to vindicate himself over and over again, in everything from the most fluffy to the most dramatic.
Channing Tatum just finished filming Magic Mike XXL and is expected to work on 23 Jump Street with Jonah Hill in the next few months. But, that is one movie Tatum revealed he is not too excited to work on. Either way, Tatum has showed the world that if you are determined to reaching your dreams, then nothing can stop you.
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