Things You Never Knew About Channing Tatum's Stripper Past

By now, anyone who follows an ounce of celebrity news knows that Channing Tatum briefly performed as a male stripper back when he was about 18 years old. But did you know that his stripper name loosely sounded like Cindy Crawford? Or how much money his moves actually made him? We've pulled together 9 surprising facts you might not know about Tatum's stripping past. Check them out, below. 

In an interview with the UK magazine GQ Style, Tatum admits he got into stripping because was "young and dumb and stupid and just wanted to make some money." He added: "You can work ten hours a day for minimum wage — that's the opportunities for kids without a college education. Get some sh*t job that you're really going to have to bust your hump for. Or you can try something else a little crazy." And here I thought my summer job mowing lawns was hardcore.

Despite being an obvious fan among his female patrons, Tatum confessed he didn't exactly rake in the dough on stage. "On a good night, [I would make] 150 bucks... Not as much as you think," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "On a bad night, 70 bucks — even 50 at times." My, how things have changed.

Although his stint as a stripper launched two Magic Mike movies, it was actually pretty short lived. In a 2012 interview with the AV Club, Tatum estimated he stripped "around six to eight months." In fact, it was director Steven Soderbergh who wound up convincing Tatum to explore the idea of turning his stripper past into a movie. "I did this for about eight months of my life, and I told Soderbergh about it, and he was just like, 'Look, we have to make this into a movie,'" Tatum told MTV. "And I was like, 'why?' and then he's like, 'Because I've never seen it before.'"

Also in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Tatum recalled an embarrassing moment on the job when a patron compared him to a member of her family. "[One time, while giving a woman a lap dance] the lady goes, 'Oh my God! Look at you! You remind me of my nephew!' — and then grabs me," he said. "It hit me like a hand grenade. It was like tick, tick, tick, boom: She's grabbing my butt and saying, 'You remind me of my nephew.'" Awkward.

Tatum tells The Hollywood Reporter that being in the world of male stripping led him to experiment with drugs. "I wouldn't say I was losing myself in drugs because I wasn't doing anything habitually," he said. "Just experimenting. Experimenting, I would say. Never the big ones — crack or heroin. I never OD'd or anything. Never." He said he also tried cocaine a couple of times, but that it was ultimately drinking that was his biggest thing. "I didn't look at drinking as a problem," he said. "It wasn't at that point, and I still don't think it's a problem. But at that time in my life, it was, 'Let's go out and have a great time.'"

In a recent interview on Late Night with Seth Meyers, Tatum revealed he was assigned the name "Chan Crawford" by someone at a place he worked. "I guess when you're about to go out on stage in your thong... the last thing you're worried about is your name," Tatum said, when asked if he was embarrassed by the name. 

Talk about a bombshell interview. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Tatum revealed his dad did not learn about his stripping days until watching his son give an interview on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2010. "We were walking together, and my dad said: 'Why? You didn't need the money. We always provided,'" Tatum said. "I told him it had nothing to do with him. That was my road. That was the road I had to take."

Although he's got killer moves on stage — not to mention an equally killer body — Tatum told Out magazine he felt like "nothing" on stage. "You're just a guy taking off his clothes, looking like a fool in a stupid outfit," he said. "I never enjoyed the taking-the-clothes-off part. You are on a stage with people yelling at you and you feel like you're a rock star, but you're nothing."

Tatum has said multiple times that, although he lived in the world of male stripping, Magic Mike isn't an autobiographical movie. "The only thing that's factual is me being 18 and being in Florida, I dropped out of college and playing football, and literally started going into this abyss of a world and just sort of lived it up for about eight months," he told IFC in 2012. "I don't think anybody would really want to see the autobiographical [version]. Like it would, ugh, that's just gross." Right. Tell that to your millions of female fans.