Channing Tatum's in "Fighting" Shape!

You know cute and athletic actor Channing Tatum from his "moves" in the Step Up films, as a returning Iraq War soldier in Stop-Loss and Amanda Bynes' college love interest in She's the Man. This week you can catch the adorable and hunky Channing playing a street-wise huckster turned underground fighter in the action-packed and kinda romantic film Fighting. This summer, the affable actor hits big screens in the big popcorner G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and later in the romantic film Dear John opposite Amanda Seyfried.

We are always delighted to chat with Channing because he is "just folks". He is always candid and honest in his answers to our questions and polite and friendly as heck. We like that. Picture this cutie with a short, military-style buzz cut and wearing jeans and a form-fitting gray Henley-style shirt. On our interview day at a Beverly Hills hotel, we were also chatting with Channing's co-star the marvelous Terrence Howard when Channing ran like lighting into the room, quickly tagging Terrence then running away! Quite the cool stealth attack. Later, when Channing came in to talk to us......

TeenHollywood: What's with that attack on Terrence? Are you going to come in and....

Channing: And start attacking people? No. [he laughs].

TeenHollywood: Were you just in attack mode in preparation for the G.I. Joe press day?

Channing: No. No! I'd probably run into the wrong guy and I'd be 'wham!' knocked out. That wouldn't be good press. 'Channing Tatum, Knocked Out!'

TeenHollywood: Speaking of getting knocked out, was it important to you that Fighting wasn't just about the physicality but was about the relationships?

Channing: Yeah. This was originally a basketball film. I said 'I don't want to do a basketball film'. A month later, [Director Dito Montiel] calls me up and he's like 'Hey, I know it's basketball movie but come here. I've got a take on it'. I come to meet him and he tells me it's Midnight Cowboy and I'm like 'that's amazing. I would love to play Joe Buck in Midnight Cowboy, especially your version of Midnight Cowboy. Hell, yeah!' And then I'm like 'wait a minute. We haven't taken basketball out'. I just suggested 'let's make a fight film' and a week later they did it and it was awesome. It was great.

TeenHollywood: Your character Shawn is a tough street kid but he also opens doors for little old ladies. Did you have to find that balance to play him or is that just you?

Channing: [big grin] I'm from the South. If I didn't open a door for my mom or my sister, I got slapped on the back of the head. That got fixed real quick. I wasn't about to not do that.

TeenHollywood: So you brought that experience to the character?

Channing: Yeah. That's what Dito really wanted. They came to him and told him he couldn't cuss in the movie. He was like 'you want me to do an underground fighting movie on a PG-13? I can't do it. I'm going to go home and think about it tonight and, if I can't wrap my head around it, then you have to find somebody else to do it.' We were way down the line on the movie for him to tell us that. We talked about it. It was really his idea. 'Oh, Shawn just chooses not to cuss. That's just his upbringing. He went to church. He doesn't cuss because he chooses not to. Harvey [Terrence's character] is the same way. He's old-fashioned'.

TeenHollywood: I didn't miss the cursing.

Channing: Yeah, you don't notice it because that world is so dangerous that you would expect it and no one did it and it just goes to show you, you can do anything if you do it right.

TeenHollywood: Shawn is on a downward spiral on the streets. He meets Harvey and kind of turns his life around. Were you ever kind of lost and someone came along who helped?

Channing: Yeah. I've had the real, amazing situation that I've always had someone in my life like that whether they were interchangeable or not, there was always someone who came by at the right moment to sort of put things in perspective for me and to make me look at something, maybe how I wasn't before. I've had a thousand of them.

TeenHollywood: Like spirit guides.

Channing: Yeah, exactly. People that are your little guardian angel that just come right at the moment. I remember I got so pissed off one day about something. I don't remember what it was now, but I had one of my friend's little boys with me and I took him out for the day and I was like 'God, I hate it when...whatever.. happened' and he looks up and says 'you shouldn't hate anything' and I was just like [makes a sad, crying face] 'You're right! I'm sorry'. He was so young. He could barely even walk and he was like 'you shouldn't hate anything'. Oh my God, you're absolutely right!

TeenHollywood: Cool story. Did your dancing background help with the Fighting scenes at all?

Channing: Yeah. I'd say that dancing has helped, probably, in everything. Even in acting. You're comfortable with your body, then you can relax. You don't get tight or tense and even choreography, moving with people, staging, knowing your distance and stuff like that. Probably the most dangerous thing is distance when you're doing those fake fights. You're swinging with all your might and they have to time you and you always make eye contact so you can't know exactly how far away you are because you're looking in someone's eyes. You swing and you've just got to know.

TeenHollywood: But we hear that you got hit! They got your nose.

Channing: Oh man. It was over here [he indicates way over to the right side of his face]. I'm looking at [Producer] Kevin Misher because there are no mirrors around where we were fighting and I'm like 'it's not good, huh?' And Kevin's like [sighs and looks away] he didn't even answer me. Dito was like [frightened look] 'Oh...right' [laughter] and then Yuri's [another actor's] ring man was there, thank God, and he goes and puts two spoons on ice and mashes my nose back in. It didn't swell that bad. My eyes got black a little but nothing we couldn't cover.

TeenHollywood: He's used to fixing that kind of thing.

Channing: Yeah, he's just like 'right.. [indicates putting his nose back where it belongs]. He was mashing the swelling away. They just know how to fix 'um. It doesn't feel good but they know how. Spoons and quarters, two cold quarters and just squeezing your nose. Now you know. Next time it happens, go 'I got this!'

TeenHollywood: Ewwww, hope it doesn't happen around me! What was your workout for this?

Channing: The greatest thing about my career is I get to be really on and really off. I'm at home drinking beer and eating cheeseburgers and chocolate cake but then, when I'm on, I get really serious and it's all the way to the wall and that's great because I have all day to work out. People that do nine to fives don't. So, I wake up and I run for an hour then go and do my training. When I was doing Fighting, I would go work out for two and a half hours with straight up learning how to fight, learning how to be comfortable on the ground and standing up and taking punches and blocking them. Then I'd go home and run for another hour and a half so running was a big part of my program but then eating well as well.

TeenHollywood: Talk about working with Terrence. You have an incredible rapport. Is it a love/hate relationship?

Channing: No. I've loved watching that guy act since I remember seeing him in films. It was way before I was an actor or even planned to act. And then I met him at Sundance and he had seen "Saints" and he had all these amazing things to say about "Saints" (A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints) and about my performance it in and it literally welled me up because it was the first time that I had someone that I really thought of as a great actor tell me that he liked my work and I just almost couldn't take it. He was like 'I want to do something someday so let's keep each other in mind'. I was just like 'ahhhh, yeah'. He loved Dito so we were always on the lookout for something and as soon as we got to sit and hang out, the guy's like a big brother now.

TeenHollywood. Ah, that explains why you were comfortable running into the room and tagging him! Terrence said that you are an actor without an ego.

Channing: [beaming] Oh, that's cool!

TeenHollywood: Where did that come from and how long can that realistically last with all your current success?

Channing: I think you try your hardest to stay out of the spotlight and you don't listen to people. I'm mean, as sweet as you are [we're blushing now], I don't read what is written because I think it can warp you. You have enough people telling you you're something. A part of that is going to assimilate in your head. I don't want to read what other people write [about me]. I don't want to know. I just want to keep doing the things that I'm doing and hanging out with people that know me from before I was an actor.

TeenHollywood: You go from smaller films to G.I. Joe. What was the challenge to go into the lead of that huge, Hollywood movie? What was daunting about that?

Channing: It's not only daunting but I had no idea what I was doing. I had no clue. I was terrified of the movie. I had really no aspirations to go do a huge film like that really, not yet in my career. I didn't feel ready for it. I kind of got thrown into it and, in doing so, it really opened my mind. It's just acting. It's a different style of acting; more skipping along the surface and it is about the big explosions and stuff. You're not sitting there trying to do Shakespeare.

TeenHollywood: You are also playing a character that you can't take seriously but you take your work seriously. So, where is the line between those two?

Channing: You kind of find it. It's weird, and you laugh at it. That's the only way to do it. I don't know anyone who wasn't laughing on the set all the time on G.I. Joe. Marlon Wayans is my like partner in the movie and we laughed through the entire thing. I'm sitting there looking at a green screen yelling 'Ripcord! Yaaaaaa!' and stuff like that and you're just like 'what am I doing?' Or you're like 'you get the rockets. I'll get the nanomites'. 'Wait a minute, what are nanomites?' I don't know what is going on. But you just have fun with it and you pray, pray, pray that they get a good take because you don't know what anything looks like. You don't know what you're reacting to. They're like 'look right! Look left!' You don't know what's happening so you can only trust your director and that's it.

TeenHollywood: All the other actors we've spoken to on the film say they were told to over-act.

Channing: Yeah, exactly. I was afraid of over-acting but that's what you can't be afraid of. I'm like 'no, man. It just feels too big. I can't do it'. [The director's] like 'just trust me. Promise me you're gonna do it and I promise you I won't use the take if it's not right'. I'm like 'okay' and I do it and it would be like pulling teeth but you do it. I haven't seen the movie but I've seen the ADR stuff and it fits and you can't believe it. You thought you were the worst actor on the planet.

TeenHollywood: There are all these "techie" lines. What was the line in that film that you thought you would never be able to say with a straight face?

Channing: Every single line [Laughs]. There was 'action figure sold separately' or something like that they wanted me to put in the film. Marlon had a line that was like 'and a kung-fu grip'. All the G.I. Joe [dolls] have a kung-fu grip and he had to say that about somebody that grabbed him. He's like 'oh, he's got a kung-fu grip'. I'm like 'that's never gonna work'. It's in the movie and it works a little bit. All the fanboys will be like 'yeah!' And people that don't know about the kung-fu grip will be like 'whatever. It's what he chose to say right then'. Just for a wink at the crowd.

TeenHollywood: So have you started your own production company like a lot of other actors have?

Channing: Yeah, it's my company with just a couple of buddies who are my writing partners and we're just starting to write now. I love acting but I think I'm going to really enjoy being on the other side [of the camera] one day. I like creating almost more than being in the spotlight. I like just to be a creative person that gets to write something that I think is interesting and see it come to life.

TeenHollywood: What summer movie are you looking forward to (other than your own)?

Channing: Star Trek I'm interested in. I love Chris Pine. Obviously, I love J.J. [Abrams] and his films and I love Chris Pine. I've always noticed him in every movie he's ever been in and I'm so happy for him that now, this is his movie and he's gonna rock it!

TeenHollywood: Can you say something about your movie Dear John? Is that a romance with Amanda Seyfried?

Channing: Yeah. Romantic movie. Nicolas Sparks. I think everybody knows The Notebook, for the most part. It's not that far [from that]. It's a tearjerker. [It plays on] your heartstrings, hugely sentimental in more of a contemporary way. The Notebook was a very artistic film and captured a time and I think this is a very contemporary, relative time. Sparks has such a formula. It's like Novocain, man, it works! It just does. I got to meet him. He's actually a very interesting guy.

TeenHollywood: You play a soldier?

Channing: Yeah, a soldier who is home on leave and falls in love with a girl and he has a peculiar relationship with his dad. His dad has, unbeknownst to anyone in the family, Aspergers or a form of it and he's a very reclusive person and not a social person which has, in turn, made John a little bit anti-social.

TeenHollywood: Who plays the dad?

Channing: Richard Jenkins, such an oh my God, amazing actor! He's the guy that you tap when you just need a brilliant actor to come in. Right, brilliant actor? Go! And he hits it every time, on the mark.

TeenHollywood: So, are you reading more scripts?

Channing: Yeah. I'm trying to figure out what movie. There's all these scripts out there with directors attached but no one can read the scripts because they're so top secret and you're like 'how do I want this movie? Look, I love you as a director and I would bend over backwards to do anything you're gonna do but I just want to know what it is'. They won't let anything out about anything which is kind of smart.

TeenHollywood: So how do you decide to sign on to anything then?

Channing: You go into the meetings and you've gotta sign the confidential agreement thing and they sort of tell you what it is and you're like 'all right. I understand what that character is. I think I would enjoy playing your version of that so....can I read a script?' They're like 'hummmmm, we'll call you'. You're like 's**t!'