Channing Tatum

Channing Tatum portrays Michael “Magic Mike” Lane, a construction worker turned male stripper in Tampa, Florida who takes on a younger performer as his protege in the American comedy directed by Steven Soderbergh.

We were sitting over a beer and I told [Steven Soderbergh] that I was a stripper for eight months when I was nineteen. I said, ‘I want to make a movie out of it.’ And he said, ‘you should write it.’ And I’m like, ‘yeah Soderbergh, I’ll go write that.’ Cut to three or four months later, I read an interview where he said that he would be willing to direct. I called him up and said, ‘how much bullshit is in this article?’ He was like, ‘I’m as serious as bone’s spur, we should sit down.’ And we sat down . . . at Carney’s over a hot dog ironically enough. And we decided to do it.”