Channing Tatum Opens Up About His Struggles In School: 'I Have Never Considered Myself A Smart Person

Hunky actor Channing Tatum covers T magazine where the Magic Mike XXL star opens up about being diagnosed with ADHD, struggling in school and never considering himself smart. He continues to explain what brought him to acting, which he considers his outlet.

"I have never considered myself a very smart person, for a lot of reasons," Tatum reveals to the magazine. "Not having early success on that one path messes with you. You get lumped in classes with kids with autism and Down syndrome, and you look around and say, 'OK, so this is where I'm at.' Or you get put in the typical classes and you say, 'All right, I'm obviously not like these kids either.' So you're kind of nowhere. You're just different. The system is broken. If we can streamline a multibillion-dollar company, we should be able to help kids who struggle the way I did."

Tatum, 34, was born in Alabama, where his mother was an airline worker and his father worked in construction. His family moved him and his sister when he was 6 to Mississippi, where he grew up near the bayous close to the Mississippi River. Though the actor was never great at hitting the books, he was athletic, excelling in football, soccer, track, baseball and performing martial arts.

He goes on to explain that his outlet was not showed to him through his parents, but by the other kids at school.

"So when I started going out into the world, I was drawn to people who knew about movies, art, even fashion. I went to New York and did the whole modeling thing, and I just learned everything I could from anybody who knew something I didn't," Tatum said. "My mom said, 'Be a sponge.' And so I've learned more from people than I have from school or from books."

You can catch the actor in the sequel Magic Mike XXL, set to hit theaters July 1.