Channing Tatum: Dancin' Dynamo!

You saw him as Amanda Bynes' guy in the recent She's the Man. He was a hot biker in Supercross and was in Coach Carter with Samuel Jackson. But, you've never seen totally hot Channing Tatum as a dancing dynamo! In the dance drama film Step Up, Channing's street dancing moves show off his athletic bod to the max. And he's not bad as he cozies up to leading lady Jenna Dewan as well.

In the film, Channing plays a foster kid who pals in his Baltimore hood with friends who boost cars and sell them to chop shops. He's not proud of it and starts making a life change when he finds a calling in dance while doing some community service at an upscale performing arts school. Both the love of dance and the school's hottest dance diva, win his heart.

We met with Channing in Beverly Hills recently. The handsome actor/dancer and former commercial model looked anything but ghetto in black suitcoat and slacks with knit vest and crisp white shirt open at collar and cuffs. We learned about his audition for the part, his hip hop dance lessons, his leading lady, his childhood pranks, and his opinions of fellow actors in the film Heavy D and Mario. This guy is all kinetic motion! He uses his hands constantly when he talks and can barely sit still. Go Channing! Move that bod!

TeenHollywood: What did you do for your audition?

Channing: I try to block it out of my mind whenever I can. I'm sure there's the audition tape floating around somewhere, but...

TeenHollywood: It'll come up on the DVD.

Channing: Yeah, exactly. I hope it never makes the light of day. I'm not ashamed of it by any means, but I've come a long way since then. The dancing audition was nerve wracking. Anne [director/choreographer Anne Fletcher] is the elite of the elites in this whole industry in the dance world. Everyone knows her. She's "mama." Going in and auditioning for her dancing was a huge thing for me, because I'm pretty insecure about my dancing. I had never been trained before. But I know what I like to do.

TeenHollywood: We read that you originally thought you might get into the extreme sports scene.

Channing: I love extreme sports, yeah. I was never talented in those arenas. Like I like dirt bikes but I never had anywhere near the talent to go in that direction. You know, you kind of just do things when you're in the country that are stupid because you're bored, and they turn out to be extreme.

TeenHollywood: More the "Jackass" style?

Channing: Yeah, exactly like that! We were so bored and we didn't have PlayStations back then that were as cool as they are now. [laughs]

TeenHollywood: What was the experience of working with these trained dancers?

Channing:Nerve wracking. There are so many different levels of it. For example, I had to learn how to count music. I didn't know how to count music at all. And [hip hop choreographer] Jamal [Sims] kind of found a way in for me. He would make sounds like, [demonstrates like a human beat box]. And I remembered what I would do for those things. Your body has to learn something and your mind has to learn something, and just getting them to work together is like the big key.

TeenHollywood: So working with Jamal on hip hop had to be hard but were you okay showing what you learned to everybody else on set?

Channing: Well, you learn it in like a closed environment, like in a dance studio by yourself, where it's just you and Jamal. And then they throw you out in front of people, and you're like, [nervously] 'You all are going to be here while I'm doing this?' It's different than going and dancing in a club. It kind of makes me pinch myself every day that I did a dance movie. I haven't even seen the whole thing, so I don't know if I will be able to watch it all the way through. I'll just be like sinking into my chair more and more and more knowing that the final dance number's coming. But yeah, it was an amazing experience.

TeenHollywood: What was it like working with Jenna [Dewan] as a dance partner? She's had lots of dance training.

Channing: I don't know how I would have done it without her, to be honest with you. It's easy for a guy to be a partner, especially if he's working with someone that knows what they're doing like she does. We were auditioning other actors that didn't know how to dance, and it just would have never worked because they'd have had to get a dance double, and it just would have been fake and unbelievable. She walked in and gave an amazing read, but then after she danced, it was over. Like they just closed the door and they were like, 'All right, cool. So we got our Nora now.' I learned so much from her.

TeenHollywood: Was she tough on you?

Channing: Dancers, apparently, I found out, make it work. I want to make a t-shirt that says 'Make it work'. Because I was falling on my face like every five minutes or just forgetting it, and the day of, like she was just like, 'You just got to make it work. You just got to blunder through it, and whether it's good or bad, you just get it done.' And you want to make it as good as possible. That's why you work so hard. But I was nervous.

TeenHollywood: In Step Up, your character Tyler takes the rap for his friends after you all semi-trash stuff in the school. Have you ever taken the rap for your friends?

Channing: [big knowing grin] Depending on the situation. We set the house on fire once. For some stupid reason, we thought it was fun to pour gasoline in the garage and light it and ride our skateboards through it. I don't know, I think we had just watched Back to the Future or something, and we wanted to like walk through the fire. We were like, 'Yeah!' And then, yeah, caught the house on fire a little bit. Didn't wreck the place or anything.

TeenHollywood: But, were you left holding the bag?

Channing: Kinda. My dad's a strict guy, and I still wanted to hang out with my buddies. [laughs] They'd have never been allowed over again. So I took the rap for that one. But there's other things [I've done] that I've been like, 'I'm out of here! Bye! Good luck!'

TeenHollywood: We've seen similar stories before. How is Step Up going to distinguish itself from movies like Honey and Save the Last Dance?

Channing: You know, I don't know if we're exactly trying to separate ourselves. I don't think we were ever really trying to say, 'Oh, we're going to break ground with this.' Dancing movies are good because they have a formula, and you love them for a reason. It's always like the underdog-type thing. But I think, if anything, if I had to pick one special thing about the movie [it would be that] we do all of our own dancing. There's not one take in this whole movie where we're not doing our own stuff. Not one. We didn't even have dance doubles.