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Channing Tatum Pens Empowering Letter for Daughter Everly: Always Be Your ‘Authentic Self’

They grow up so fast! Channing Tatum wrote an empowering essay for his 3-year-old daughter, Everly, for Cosmopolitan — and he’s already thinking about the young woman she’ll become.

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“I don’t want her looking to the outside world for answers,” the actor, 37, wrote in an open letter published on Saturday, May 6. “My highest hope for her is just that she has the fearlessness to always be her authentic self, no matter what she thinks men want her to be.”

Wondering what Everly’s approach to love will be, Tatum reflected on his own marriage to Jenna Dewan Tatum. “I knew our connection was really powerful, but I wasn’t sure what our relationship was going to be,” he wrote of the actress, whom he met on the set of their 2006 film Step Up. “Then one day, Jenna just blurted out that she knew exactly what she wanted in life and she didn’t have to look for it anymore because it was me. She had no idea what I’d say or how I’d react, but that was her truth.”

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The Magic Mike actor explained that he felt an “incredible rush” when Jenna, 36, opened up to him. “I felt strength, because in that moment, she had accepted every part of me, the good and the bad,” he wrote. “And I knew she wasn’t auditioning me or hoping I’d meet some set of expectations. That radical authenticity of hers was what made me fall head over heels in love. … And that’s what I want for my daughter — to be expectation-less with her love and not allow preconceived standards to affect her, to ask herself what she wants and feel empowered enough to act on it.”


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Channing concluded his essay with a note about breaking gender stereotypes. “We live in a society that has trained men and women to play certain kinds of roles for a long time, and the beauty of this amazing moment we’re living in is that we’re finally starting to break free from those roles,” he wrote. “Women, especially, are realizing that they no longer have to conform to certain standards of social and sexual behavior, and this changes what they need from men and the role of men in general.”

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