SAN FRANCISCO””“Jesus Christ! This guy is smoking!”  That exclamation about Channing Tatum on a TV.com message board pretty much sums up the sentiment surrounding the 26-year-old nowadays. It happens when you walk around shirtless for much of your early career. An athlete and former model whose first entertainment gig was in Ricky Martin's “She Bangs”  video, the broody actor with the trademark buzz cut most recently caught moviegoers' attention as the sensitive soccer striker given to wearing dangerously low-slung sweatpants in the Vancouver-shot She's the Man. He would have shot here again, as the kickboxing Gambit in X-Men: The Last Stand, until that character was cut. In his new film, Step Up (opening Friday [August 11]), he tugs on the wife beater to play a young offender recruited by a Baltimore ballerina (Jenna Dewan) as her partner in a performing-arts showcase when she finds out he can dance. In a nutshell, Tatum has the brawn thing down.

“I'm looking forward to doing a role that is very intellectual, but I don't know if I'm there yet in my career,”  he told the Georgia Straight last month during a promotional tour. “I am very physical. I move a lot; I can't hardly stay still. I can hardly wait to be challenged in that.” 

Although Tatum is practical about his future””“It's a long road ahead of me and I'm sure I'm going to fall on my face a bunch” ””he has yet to be, in his words, “trashed”  for a performance. To the contrary, the six-pack-and-pout factor is paying off. Variety's review of A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, an ensemble film that won the special jury prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival, said “Tatum creates a powerful study of a self-destructive street guy trapped with no good options.”  But it was recalling Rolling Stone's weighty comparison””“Shirtless and oozing physical and sexual threat, Tatum stalks his turf like Brando in Streetcar” ””that had the actor on the verge of turning as pink as his dress shirt.

“It was one of the happier days of my life,”  he said. “To even be compared to a movie that he's done would be enough. But to be like him in a movie? I could stop now. Just to have that quote being said in a really respected magazine was, God, heaven.”  Marlon Brando, however, is not Tatum's main influence. That honour goes to Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Oh, and the late, iconic TV comedian Jackie Gleason. Jackie Gleason?

“Everyone finds that one weird for some reason,”  Tatum said, “but he can do the swaggery, cool roles too. He wasn't always funny. That's what I liked about him. He had a presence about him that you were definitely nervous about too. He was a big guy. He was a dark guy. The movie business has changed so much that it's hard to have him as a role model. But just to watch his charisma is definitely inspiring.” 

How sweet it is right now for the Alabama-born actor. Initially, however, the self-taught Tatum said the filmmakers were seeking a professional dancer they could coach to act for the role of Tyler, which he eventually won.

“It all worked out ultimately, I think, because Tyler is just a street dancer that basically learns from what he sees on TV, just like my story,”  Tatum reckoned, “and then he got introduced to this world, and that's exactly what I did.”  Still, he had misgivings about merging his street style with that of formally educated hoofers, like leading lady Dewan, who'd toured with Janet Jackson and P. Diddy as a backup performer.

“I was nervous in the beginning,”  Tatum admitted, “but every one of them was so nice and they held my hand throughout everything. If I needed to go over it again, they would come over and do it with me until we were blue in the face. I was just drenched in sweat by the end of the day. Always.” 

Contrary to Internet rumours, Tatum said the hand-holding with Dewan isn't carrying over off-screen. (“It's definitely not.” ) But he was recently spotted teaching the B-more Bounce to a female urban-weekly-newspaper writer in a San Francisco hotel room. Okay, that was me. When asked if he'd show the Straight a dance move””I wanted to verify he didn't need a body double””he jumped off the sofa and guided me patiently through a routine from Step Up involving elbows bouncing off knees, a turn and jump, and, to close, an impromptu hip-hop solo by a grinning Tatum. He's the real deal, all right. I stunk, but my choreographer still bestowed a parting hug. Tatum's people really ought to take their bankable star aside and explain that raw talent doesn't need to charm anyone into writing a flattering article.