<\/p>\n
Channing Tatum says his performance in “Roofman,” which tells the true story of a man who robbed dozens of McDonald’s and hid out in a toy store, helped the stripper-turned-actor overcome “imposter syndrome.”<\/p>\n
“I was getting (acting) jobs before I knew anything of what I was doing,” Tatum told reporters Sunday, a day after the film’s world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.<\/p>\n
“I think I’ve struggled with imposter syndrome,” added the 45-year-old actor, who worked as a stripper before being hired for fashion modeling, which ultimately led to acting.<\/p>\n
“For the very first time, maybe even on this movie, I feel like I’ve actually earned my seat at the table,” Tatum said.<\/p>\n
“Roofman” recounts the life of Jeffrey Manchester, who served in the US Army but struggled when he returned to civilian life in North Carolina, including financially.<\/p>\n
He robbed dozens of fast food stores through the 1990s, mainly McDonald’s, entering the restaurants through the roof.<\/p>\n
The film highlights one of Manchester’s repeated gestures of kindness — ensuring restaurant staff were wearing coats before he locked them the cold storage. <\/p>\n
Manchester was arrested and sentenced to decades in prison, but broke out in 2004.<\/p>\n
The film centers on the months that followed the prison break, before his rearrest in 2005.<\/p>\n
Manchester built a secret hideout inside a Toys “R” Us store in the city of Charlotte, coming out after closure at night to wash in the bathroom, surviving largely on snack food like M&Ms.<\/p>\n
He later developed a romantic relationship with one of the store’s employees, played by Kirsten Dunst.<\/p>\n
Manchester would call Tatum often from prison as the actor prepared for the role.<\/p>\n
Tatum voiced sympathy for a man who made a series of disastrous choices in an effort to earn enough money for his three children.<\/p>\n
“Look, I was a stripper,” said Tatum, whose experiences at a Tampa nightclub partly informed the 2012 film “Magic Mike.”<\/p>\n
“Sometimes the slippery slope just gets more and more slippery and then you find yourself at the bottom not knowing how to get up again,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Roofman” has the tone of a romantic comedy, emphasizing Manchester’s boyish playfulness while alone at night in a toy store for months.<\/p>\n
Director Derek Cianfrance told reporters the decision to focus on levity, not the severity of Manchester’s crimes, was a deliberate choice.<\/p>\n
“Society judged (Manchester) very harshly and he’s serving 45 years (in prison),” said Cianfrance.<\/p>\n
“I thought that in our movie we could look at him with a little bit more grace.”<\/p>\n
Manchester has unsuccessfully tried to escape from prison twice since his re-arrest in 2005.<\/p>\n
bs\/sla<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Channing Tatum says his performance in “Roofman,” which tells the true story of a man who robbed dozens of McDonald’s and hid out in a toy store, helped the stripper-turned-actor overcome “imposter syndrome.” “I was getting (acting) jobs before I knew anything of what I was doing,” Tatum told reporters Sunday, a day after the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2004751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[320289,365420,362271,318702,312645],"class_list":["post-2004750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-channing-tatum","tag-imposter-syndrome","tag-jeffrey-manchester","tag-toronto-international-film-festival","tag-world-premiere"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Tatum-says-earned-his-place-as-an-actor-after-Roofman.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2004750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2004751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2004750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2004750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2004750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}