CHANNING TATUM RECOGNIZES HIS SAINTS

(VIDEO) Channing Tatum plays a street thug in A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints, and noticed a few saints of his own.

Step Up star Channing Tatum plays a misguided and troubled teen in A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints based on the memoir of the same name by Dito Montiel who relates his mid-eighties youth with his friends growing up in Astoria Queens. In the film Channing plays Dito’s real life best friend Antonio but he didn’t want Channing to actually meet him so he looked to his own childhood pal for inspiration.

Channing wants to assure the real Antonio that he wanted to do justice to his relationship with Dito and not mimic him in any way.

“For me my best friend growing up was an Antonio maybe not to the extreme but he was very, very close. I haven’t talked to him in years. I have no idea. He might be in prison, I have no clue. I’ve kind of lost touch with that whole group of friends. I go back home and talk to old friends but not those friends, not those crazy friends that I had.”

Channing who had a troublesome upbringing says he can certainly recognize his own saints that saved him.

“I know he knows we made a film but I don’t know if he’s seen it. I hope he sees it one day and I hope he’s happy with it because I never tried to be Antonio at all. That’s something I want to be clear that I never wanted to be Antonio. I just wanted to be able to tell these guys’ relationship and just show the love that they had between each other and just really get the relationship right and to show their friendship and who Antonio was to Dito and vice versa.”

Channing is currently shooting a project with Boys Don’t Cry director Kimberly Pierce playing a soldier who’s come home from Iraq and refuses to return to battle. A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints opens Friday.

“Then my mom, my dad. I kind of had a very distant sort of childhood things and they came into my life at the right time again and we fixed our relationships. Even on top of that my girlfriend she came in right at the right time for me for a certain other thing in my life. People just keep coming in that are those saints in your life that teach you.”