Channing Tatum's Real Name: Channing Matthew Tatum

Quick answer: Channing Tatum's full name is Channing Matthew Tatum. He was born on April 26, 1980, in Cullman, Alabama. He is best known as "Magic" Mike Lane in the three Magic Mike films and for Step Up, 21 Jump Street, and 22 Jump Street. He acts under his birth name (Britannica; Library of Congress).

Real name and early life

Britannica's scholars encyclopedia opens his entry with "Channing Tatum, in full Channing Matthew Tatum." The Library of Congress name authority files him as "Tatum, Channing" and records "Channing Matthew Tatum (born April 26, 1980) … born Cullman, Alabama," along with many foreign-script forms of the name.

The Encyclopedia of Alabama, published by Alabama Humanities, says his parents are Kay Faust Tatum and Glenn Matthew Tatum, and he has an older sister. When he was six, the family moved to the Pascagoula area of Mississippi, where his parents opened a pizza shop. He spent most of his teenage years in Tampa, Florida, graduated from Tampa Catholic High School in 1998, and won a football scholarship to Glenville State in West Virginia. After dropping out, he worked construction and as a nightclub stripper in Tampa. He then modeled in Miami for Abercrombie & Fitch, Aéropostale, and Gap, and danced in Ricky Martin's "She Bangs" video.

Career highlights

After a 2004 CSI: Miami episode and a part in Coach Carter (2005), he drew praise in A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (2006). That same year he became a teen heartthrob with She's the Man and Step Up. He married his Step Up co-star Jenna Dewan in 2009. They have a daughter and divorced in 2019.

Action films such as G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and romances such as Dear John and The Vow followed. In 2012 came 21 Jump Street with Jonah Hill and Steven Soderbergh's Magic Mike, which was loosely based on his own stripping days and grossed $170 million worldwide. Both got sequels. He also starred in White House Down, Foxcatcher, Hail, Caesar!, and Logan Lucky, and voiced Superman in The Lego Movie. In 2014 he co-founded the production company Free Association with Reid Carolin.

He co-directed and starred in Dog (2022). Later films include The Lost City, Fly Me to the Moon, Blink Twice, Roofman (2025), and Deadpool & Wolverine (2024), where he finally played Gambit after years of attempts. His picture book The One and Only Sparkella (2021) was a New York Times bestseller.

Name notes for searchers

Tatum is his family surname, and Matthew, his middle name, is also his father's middle name. He has no stage name. Russian and other foreign-script spellings in the LOC record, such as "Chenning Tatum," are transliterations of the same name.