His co-star laughs. “There was one run up the hill,” Bullock says, though she struggled—in a sequined onesie and high heels, no less—to keep up with workout-happy Tatum. “I was dying a small death inside,” she adds, “[but] I was not about to let him see it!” Today the two are on even ground, safely Zooming with Parade from their individual homes. Bullock, 57, who is mom to son Louis, 12, and daughter Laila, 8, is wearing a button-down shirt and chunky black glasses and is backlit by a bright window that’s creating a halo around her head. Tatum, 41, father to daughter Everly, 8 (with his ex-wife, actress JennaDewan), is in a cornflower blue sweater and a beanie as he talks from his cozy wood-walled cabin. They’re clearly at ease with each other as they shoot jokes back and forth. And as they talk, it’s obvious that though they share a drive to produce their own projects and a passion for parenting, they are opposites in many ways—just like their characters.
Opposites Attract
In The Lost City (in theaters March 25), Bullock plays reclusive romance novelist Loretta Sage, who is kidnapped by an eccentric billionaire (Harry Potter’s DanielRadcliffe) to help him find the treasure in the lost city from her latest novel. Tatum plays Alan, her novel’s hunky cover model, who—determined to live up to her book’s hero, Dash—sets off to rescue her, sweeping them both into an adventure straight out of one of Loretta’s books (and into a hilarious cameo by BradPitt). They filmed in the Dominican Republic last summer, which was “sweaty,” says Tatum. And while it was sometimes a rough shoot (with “bacteria eating everybody’s guts up,” he jokes), he feels the movie couldn’t come at a better time: “We want escapism more than ever now.” Bullock calls The Lost City a throwback, like the movies Hollywood was making decades ago. Indeed, the story is reminiscent of Romancing the Stone from the 1980s. The script had sat on a shelf at Paramount for a couple years, with no takers. “I loved the idea of getting into something that no one else was touching,” she says, and she could see the possibilities when she read it, how funny it would be to play these “misfits—oil and vinegar—stuck in a situation.” Tatum says their big, broad characters were so extreme, that after his scenes he kept asking the directors, “Is this working? Are you gonna be able to use any of this? I feel like a crazy person in this movie, that I’m just kinda swinging for the fence!” But he and Bullock connected, he says, with the hearts of their characters, whose “neuroses come from very emotional cornerstones.” Bullock says she greatly enjoyed playing Loretta. “I like how tight and wound-up and shut-off she is,” she says—then interrupts herself. “Channing, don’t even!” she says, warning him off making any real-life comparisons. “I hear your brain all the way over there!” While his boss and co-star was spinning a lot of plates as a producer, Tatum says they still had time to enjoy watching their kids play together on location. “That was awesome,” says Bullock. “You know, Chan dropping Evie over for a sleepover” and seeing the [girls] happily pile into the same bed. The daughters already knew each other well, having attended the same preschool together several years ago. In fact, that also was where Bullock and Tatum met.
Kid Stuff
Tatum, a new dad at the time, says Bullock was “a force of mama bear,” and he recalls wanting to download everything she knew about parenting. “I felt like [asking], is there a Fire Stick or something that you can plug into my brain and I can learn all the stuff?” Bullock remembers how their daughters “were trying to kill each other because they’re both A-type badass chicks,” so when she’d get a call from the school, she’d think, Please let it have been Evie; let Evie have kicked the chair out. Then, she recalls with a laugh, “You’re like, ‘Oh, no, it was Laila this week.’” Bullock’s and Tatum’s own childhoods, meanwhile, were worlds apart. She was raised in Germany and Austria with her younger sister, Gesine, and attended a German school until the family relocated to Virginia when she was in high school. Her mother, Helga, and her father, John, both were opera singers. “My father was a Renaissance man” who went to Juilliard and made records when he was younger, she says, and he also served in the U.S. Army. Both parents taught voice and practiced every day. But her mom—with whom Bullock appeared in some operas—pushed her daughters even more. “Our mother really raised us as strong women,” she says. “‘You don’t need men. Make your own money. It’s about art.’ She really hammered that home.” Tatum grew up all-American: Born in Alabama, he was raised from the age of 6 in the Pascagoula, Miss., bayou with his sister, Paige, before moving to Tampa, Fla., in the fifth grade. Tatum says he wasn’t a good student growing up, but he loved playing football and running around “literally through the woods, just getting into trouble.” His mom, Kay, was a bank teller, and his father, Glenn, was a roofer—until he got hurt on the job and began selling building products. Neither of them was into show business, Tatum says. “They didn’t even really listen to music, though my dad was from New Orleans, so I got a little bit of education in the blues.” But what Tatum appreciates now is how exposed he was to “very normal stories, very real stories, typical of the American experience.” He had no ambitions to be in movies, he says, “and then I got lucky—really, really lucky—and got some jobs before I knew even the first thing about acting.” He began his career on-camera in music videos, on TV and in films like Coach Carter before he broke out in 2006 in the comedy She’s the Man and the dance film Step Up (where he met his former wife, Jenna Dewan). He then starred in the war drama Stop-Loss, the romantic drama The Vow and the buddy flick 21 Jump Street before rocketing to the next level in 2012 with Magic Mike, loosely based on his experiences as a nightclub stripper. That critical and commercial success was spun into the sequel Magic Mike XXL, a live revue and a reality show. But after starring in 2017 in the crime caper Logan Lucky, Tatum took an almost four-year break. “That was, I think, the smartest thing I did. I was the fat kid at the buffet for a little while,” he says of his work schedule until then, “just doing everything and anything fun and cool.” He says raising his daughter made him reassess what he wanted in life. (He and Dewan split in 2018.) “Every movie,” he says, “every life experience just changes you, and you have to re-center and figure out, ‘Is this still what you want to do?’” This February, he not only starred in and produced the film Dog but also made his directorial debut, alongside his producing partner, ReidCarolin. And he’s now working on the upcoming film Magic Mike’s Last Dance.
‘I Can Handle Anything’
Bullock’s career rose steadily. After majoring in drama at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C., she moved to New York City and starred in a slew of TV shows and films before she got her big break beside KeanuReeves in Speed (1994). She spun her own gold in While You Were Sleeping, Miss Congeniality and The Proposal. After her role in the 2009 drama The Blind Side won her an Academy Award for Best Actress, she co-starred in the action film Ocean’s 8, the Netflix postapocalyptic horror hit Bird Box and 2021’s dark drama The Unforgivable. But the career choice she’s most proud of was a part that earned her another Academy Award nomination: Gravity, the 2013 space drama that she filmed after her split from her then-husband, reality star JesseJames. “I was coming out of a really hard situation, and I didn’t want to work, and I didn’t think I could,” she says. Playing astronaut Dr. Ryan Stone on her first shuttle mission “was sort of like a rebirth,” she says, “a beautiful sort of ass-kicker on many levels.” She points to a scene that required her holding a minute-long dancelike pose with one leg taped to a pole while the camera panned slowly around her. Bullock credits her former college dance teacher JeromeJenkins for her ability to pull it off. “It was one of those moments that you go, ‘Wow, I was in a really s—ty place when I got there, and I was in a really beautiful place when I left,’” she says, making her feel like, “You know what? I got this. I’m fine. I can handle anything.” Bullock—who has been dating photographer BryanRandall for seven years—continues to set a high bar for herself. “I had parents with a very severe work ethic and a stern opinion on what it was to be an artist. You live it, and you breathe it,” she says. But what her parents didn’t have was the same kind of passion for parenting. “My art comes second to my babies every single day of the week. Nothing is more important than them.” And this is where the two actors align most deeply: They’re grounded by their kids. At home, Tatum—who began dating actress ZoëKravitz after she cast him in her upcoming directorial debut, the psychological thriller Pussy Island—makes the most of the time he spends with his daughter. He teaches her to box; she puts makeup on him; and Tatum—who is also a capable artist, painting and sculpting in his spare time—loves to make art with his daughter. “Me and Evie,” he says, “any excuse to make a mess and just destroy something in my house.” So, after making it out of the jungle in The Lost City, what adventures are next? “I would just like to go on more adventures, period,” says Tatum. “I don’t care where or what kind, as long as we’re not sitting home safe and complacent.” “Chan’s more adventurous than I am, and he’s braver than I am,” says Bullock. “I’m fearful. And you’ve lectured me on it!” she tells her co-star. “I’m getting there.” But she agrees that almost everyone is yearning to get out into the world more, on real-life adventures, since the pandemic clipped our wings. And she wants to do just that with her kids. “I feel like they’ve given me a childhood that I didn’t get to experience,” she says. “I want them to lead. I want them to inspire me where to go.”
The 411
Breakfast Bullock: “Whatever it is I made for the kids. This morning was gluten-free French toast sticks with fruit.” Tatum: “I don’t usually eat breakfast anymore. I used to be a big breakfast person—eggs, grits and bacon. But now I don’t eat until, like, 1.” Book Tatum: “I’m really excited to read The Flames, by SophieHaydock. I don’t read novels all that often, but this woman wrote the narratives of all the women that [artist EgonSchiele] painted, from their perspectives.” Bullock: “I honestly have not been able to read a book in two years. I cracked open all the kids’ books that we put into the memory pile that they will get when they are 18 and give to their kids. It’s as close to a book as I’ve been able to get in two years.” Scent or Smell Tatum: “I’m kind of a fan of Egyptian musk. I smelled it on somebody one day, and I was like ‘What is that? I could wear that.’ It’s not masculine or feminine, it’s sort of just neutral.” Bullock: “That was such a sexy answer, Chan! I was gonna say peacocks.” Tatum: “Actually, have you smelled peacocks?” Bullock: “They stink! They’re stinky. I like that smell [when] it’s about to rain. Petrichor. It comes from the earth and the water meeting. We learned the word on the film, and I was like, ‘That is the smell that I obsess about!’ It means renewal, earthy, we’re not gonna die just yet.” Gotta Have Bullock: “Green tea.” Tatum: “Just a bed. I just wanna sleep between setups [laughs]. I literally run and I just lay down.” Next, 5 Things You Didn’t Know About Channing Tatum
