Los Angeles Times reporter Steven Zeitchik sat down with actor Channing Tatum, here’s an excerpt…
Channing Tatum stars in the Roman epic adventure, a Focus Features release directed by Academy Award winner Kevin MacDonald. (Focus Features)
LinkSome actors like to tout their methods. Others boast of roles they’ve pulled off. Channing Tatum prefers a little more candor. “I’m never going to be the best actor,” Tatum said over lunch last week at the Smokehouse restaurant in Burbank. “I’m just not. But I will work harder than anyone out there.”
He’s living up to that pledge. In the last year, the 30-year-old former fashion model has appeared on the big screen as a lovelorn soldier (“Dear John“), a maniacal but oddly sensitive Casanova with a happy-face tattoo in a private place (“The Dilemma“) and, at the recently concluded Sundance Film Festival, a New York City cop harboring a secret (“The Son of No One“). The Tatum barrage continues this weekend when “The Eagle,” a swords-and-togas Roman adventure, hits theaters. Tatum plays the soldier Marcus Aquila who, after being wounded in clashes in the 2nd century AD, embarks on a mission in the dangerous Scottish highlands to recover the “Eagle of the Ninth,” a military standard his father lost in a battle that also took his life. Marcus brings with him a British slave, Esca (Jamie Bell) as the two form an unlikely friendship.
Born in Alabama, Tatum spent his childhood years on the Mississippi bayou and his adolescence in Tampa, Fla. He got an offer to play football at a West Virginia state college and went on to work, among other things, as an exotic dancer. He later moved to Miami, where he was discovered on the street by a fashion scout. His first acting job was in a Ricky Martin video.
“I didn’t really grow up educated. But I work every single day to get better, to educate myself as much as I possibly can,” he said, eating an order of ribs and French fries in a way that underscores too perfectly his meat-and-potatoes attitude. He later adds, “People don’t understand how hard [actors] work and how good we want to be.”
To help him prepare for “The Eagle,” director Kevin Macdonald gave Tatum the diary of a warring Roman leader. The actor dutifully read it all. “I never would have lasted two seconds back then. Not a day,” he said, his face breaking out in a trademark tentative grin as he recalled the reading experience. “It’s just insane what these guys did. You can’t imagine. It’s insane…”
THERE’S MORE, READ THE REST
– Steven Zeitchik
RECENT AND RELATED
Johnston: This movie is going to surprise people
EXCLUSIVE: Abrams reveals secret of “Super 8″
Zack Snyder: My fave Superman artist is…
On the road: Jon Favreau wants your vote
“Pirates”: Rob Marshall on the joys of Johnny
Captain America will be a USO performer in movie
Vaughn: Hollywood is killing superhero genre
Favreau: The reason I’m leaving ‘Iron Man’ series
Comments
Print
Read Later
Our legion of super contributors is led by Hero Complex editor Gina McIntyre and 
I liked the movie very much. Didn't see it until it was out on DVD. Very impressed with the acting and storyline and the whole exciting movie!