Los Angeles, Feb 3 (IANS): Hollywood star Channing Tatum once contemplated quitting acting as he was overwhelmed by existential thoughts.

The thought of moving out of the business of acting came to him in 2018, around the time of his divorce from Jenna Dewan (with whom he shares custody of their eight-year-old daughter Everly), reports 'Variety'.

In an interview with 'Variety', the actor recollected asking himself: "Do I want to act anymore? Was I going to direct? Do I want to be in the industry anymore? I got lucky. I won a creative lottery ticket. I made a little bit of money, so I could take a step back and figure out what life is."

The thought put him on the path of other artistic pursuits, including publishing a children's book, 'The One and Only Sparkella'. He said: "I really took time off. I sculpted. I took pictures. I wrote my own stuff, not like a script or anything. Just creating on different levels. I wanted to take a breather."

During the period, Tatum put his energy into development of movies and TV shows at Free Association, which he had launched in 2014 with Carolin and Peter Kiernan, his former manager.

Some of the projects that they've been working on are the currently under production 'Spaceman', with Adam Sandler, whose rights have been secured by Netflix, and 'Step Up: Highwater', the Starz TV series.

The actor will also produce and star in the thriller 'Pussy Island', which will be his girlfriend Zoe Kravitz's directorial debut. Learning from his hustle on 'Dog', he advised his love interest not to take an acting role in it too.

"I was like, 'You'll need double the days. She's a perfectionist in the best possible way," he told 'Variety'.