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Gabrielle Union (1972- ) is an American film and television actress. She became known in 2000 after playing opposite Kirstin Dunst in the cheerleader film “Bring It On”. She was Will Smith’s love interest in “Bad Boys II” (2003) and LL Cool J’s in “Deliver Us From Eva” (2003) – a loose remake of Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew”.

According to this blog she is the tenth most beautiful woman in the world. She often makes AskMen.com’s top 99 and similar lists in men’s magazines like Maxim and Stuff.

Apart from her more obvious attributes, she has perfect skin and a warm, beautiful smile that can light up a room.

She is a Catholic schoolgirl from Omaha, Nebraska. When she was eight her family moved to California. She was a cheerleader and loved sports. She wanted to go into law, but while she was at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) she worked at a model agency answering telephones. She was so beautiful people assumed she was a model! And so she became a model herself. She appeared in Teen magazine.

It was soon discovered that she had not only beauty but acting talent as well.

Television: Her first acting part was on the television show “Moesha”. She landed small parts on a number of other television shows. She was on “Night Stalker” (2005) and “City of Angels” (2000), but neither show lasted long. She was even a Klingon on “Deep Space Nine”.

She was also in “Football Wives”, which was not picked up by ABC for 2007. It is something she knows first-hand: she married Chris Howard of the Jaguars. They separated after four years.

Film: The film that got her noticed was “Bring It On”, where she played opposite Kirstin Dunst. She did not do much acting in that film: for the most part she was just being herself. In “Deliver Us From Eva” (2003) she showed that she could play a leading lady. She often plays a beautiful but headstrong woman who thinks she knows it all – but does not!

For Christmas 2007 she appeared in “The Perfect Holiday”. Her daughter asks Santa Claus to find Union a new husband.

She has lost leading parts to Beyonce (“Austin Powers in Goldmember”), Aaliyah and, understandably, to the seventh most beautiful woman in the world, Sanaa Lathan (“Love and Basketball”). Being rejected, she says, is the worst part of acting.

When she was 19 she worked at Payless ShoeSource. A man walked in one day and forced her into a back room. She thought she was going to die. She was raped instead. Later when she was famous she went to Washington to speak before Congress to tell them how rape counselling saved her life.

Her family name, Union, comes from the civil war days when the Union army freed the slaves. Many freed slaves changed their name to that of a president, like Washington, Jefferson and Jackson. Her family named themselves after the army that freed them.

Last updated: Sunday January 13th 2008.

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