SAVOY

Gabrielle Union could be the next Julia Roberts, though Hollywood doesn't
know it yet.  She has the same athletic figure, not model-thin, which earns
her fans of both genders.  And the same broad, slightly horsy smile.  She is
brown-skin beautiful in an all-American-girl way, which helped her first
make a name for herself on such popular teen television shows as "Sister,
Sister" and "Saved By The Bell" before her last stint as Dr. Courtney Ellis
on CBS's recently cancelled series, "City of Angels."

Yet Union truly shines on the big screen.  As a cheerleader with
make-you-want-to-hollar moves, she stole last summer's surprise hit, Bring
It On, from star Kirsten Dunst.  She evokes a young Dorothy Dandridge as a
fiery and determined heroine.  Don't tell her she can't, she shouldn't or
she'll never.  She commands attention, even in supporting roles.  At 28,
Gabrielle Union has been knocked down by bigger and far badder demons than
self-doubt.  And she's emerged each time more talented and unafraid.  Which
is why, between promoting her upcoming movie, The Brothers, and filming her
next project(co-starring Vivica A. Fox), she's moonlighting in a role that
fits her nicely-The Next Big Thing.

Besides in Bring It On, which has grossed nearly $70 million for Universal,
Union has been a scene stealer in several hit films, including Love and
Basketball, She's All That and the Shakespearean parody, 10 Things I Hate
About You.  She doesn't mind that her characters were largely similar: part
Robin Givens' preppy with an attitude and part Whitley Gilbert's spoiled
brat from "A Different World."  "I would rather play a snobby black girl
going to school and being[cruel] than a drug dealer's pregnant girlfriend,"
Union says.

There's a lot of emotion behind that thought.  Being black from Omaha, Neb.,
but growing up in a predominantly white town just outside of Nowhere,
Calif., Union battled stereotypes long before she confronted Hollywood's
narrow view of blackness.  "We don't have the same opportunities as white
actors," she says, sound a familiar refrain.

"Where they get interesting scripts, ours tend to be more urban-based.
Granted, there's a market for it.  But with the emerging black middle class,
people have to know we come in all different classes and financial groups."

And shades.  As an aspiring actress, Union found that when she auditioned
for the role of a professional, educated black women, or even a bombshell,
the other women in the room were mostly light-skinned with curly hair.  She
says the opposite was true when the character was a drug dealer's girlfriend
or single moms.  Moreover, she refused to play roles she thought were
beneath her.  "I've been fortunate enough to be able to try to break down
perceptions of what is black," she says.  "It just makes me want to fight
harder.  I'm an athlete.  I will not accept a loss based on bullshit."

The audition drama didn't change until Union gained credibility as one of
the "teen elite."  Then it changed-big time.  Soon, she most often found
herself sitting in rooms filled with "100 Drew Barrymore-types and me."

When she was called to audition for the struggling "City of Angels" series
prior to its second-and final-season, Union was ecstatic about her role.
She portrayed a compassionate physician in an inner-city hospital.  This
allowed her a chance to confront the very ideas of class and race that she
wrestled with as a sociology major at the University of California-Los
Angeles, where she graduated in 1996.  But she didn't need to pitch her
enthusiasm to Steven Bochco, the show's executive producer and creator of
such shows as "NYPD Blue" and "Hill Street Blues."  He was looking for
someone to fill the void left by Fox, who departed "Angels" after its
humbling inaugural season.  "We were looking for exactly what walked in the
room," Bochco gushes.  "She's fabulous.  She's Beautiful.  She's vivacious.
When you find that all in one package, you take it."

Union's family and friends call her Nickie, which is short for Monique, her
middle name.  But Blair Underwood prefers a different nickname.  "her first
day on the set, I just looked at her walking across the room and I thought,
'She's a queen,'" says Underwood, her former "Angels" co-star.  "Gabrielle
just has this air of regality."

Portraying high-achieving characters isn't really much of a stretch for
Union.  She's been defying expectations since she was 8 years old.  That's
when Union moved with her parents and two sisters(one older, the other
younger) to Pleasanton, Calif., when her father's job with the local
telephone company brought him there.  The northern California town is the
heartland of white suburban, dysfunctional family life, Union says.  "It's
so much like American Beauty it's frightening."  At home, the budding
actress led her sisters-Kelly, now 32, and Tracy, now 21-in living-room
renditions of show-stopping numbers from Dreamgirls and Grease.

Throughout her school years, Union made do by embracing a "Mod Squad" circle
of friends-including a Mexican girl, an Asian, a Puerto Rican and two
Italians.  She's still close to some members of this multicultural clique,
but Union says she missed not having black girlfriends.  While her mother, a
technical specialist for Pacific Bell, made sure that Union and her sisters
were aware of their black heritage, Union longed for more.  "I got the facts
from  my mom, but I wanted the camaraderie," she says.  "I can tell you
anything you want to know about any[black] writer or about any event, but I
didn't have the friendships."

Union may Hollywood's beauty of the moment, but she didn't exactly turn
heads in Pleasanton.  She was considered "pretty for a black girl," but she
wasn't asked to dances.  (Pity the poor guys who come across Union's class
picture in their old Foothill High School yearbook, then slap themselves on
the forehead with a Homer Simpson "DUH!")  As soon as she could drive, Union
remembers exploring surrounding areas.  "I'd go to any town that had more
than five black people," she jokes.  "I was trying to find a boyfriend."

Although Omaha conjures images of cornfields, Dairy Queens and blond boys
who grow up to be offensive linemen for the Nebraska Huskers, her Omaha is a
predominantly black neighborhood where family ties remain strong.  Even
after her family moved to out West, she spent nearly every summer in Omaha,
where the rest of her extended family gathered each August for the annual
Bryant-Fisher family reunion.  Her mother comes from one of the larges black
families in the Midwest, with eight generations of descendants from Emma
Early Bryant-Fishers, most of whom are now scattered across the country.

Because Hollywood can be a treacherous place for an ambitious young woman,
Union cherishes her time at home, where she knows hundreds of relatives have
her back.  "Everywhere you turn you're running into a cousin," Union says.
"Somebody who knows where you're supposed to be, when you're supposed to be
there, and who will call your parents."

But there was no such support in Pleasanton.  She excelled nonetheless
inside and outside the classroom at Foothill High, where she was on the
dean's list.  She also starred in track and basketball, as well as on a
local soccer team.  Despite her apparent intelligence, Union battled typical
stereotypes because of her athleticism.  "People would say, 'Of course,
she's good at track,'" she remembers.  "That's one of the reasons I worked
harder at soccer.  It sort of goes against the grain."

After countering the perceptions of her white high school classmates, Union
was unprepared for the charge she faced as a freshman at the University of
Nebraska: not black enough.  Among the campus hazing that Union endured were
the harassing telephone calls from other black students because they thought
she was too friendly with white students.  Disillusioned, she transferred to
Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo in Southern California after just one
semester but lasted there another semester before returning home.

It would be a year before Union could overcome the self-doubt that had begun
to creep into her consciousness.  She was at a standstill-emotionally,
physically and mentally.  And on one frightful night, her malaise took a
terrible turn.

The year was 1992.  Her parents weren't about to let her sit around the
house and do nothing, so they insisted she get a job.  Union found work at a
Payless Shoe Source, where several of her friends worked.  It seemed an easy
gig; they all hung out at the store.  "We could kind of be lazy and not
really do anything."

One late night, a man entered the store while Union and another woman were
closing.  He pulled a gun, cleared out the cash register and, at gunpoint,
forced Union into a storage area.  As her co-worker remained outside, Union
was raped.  To this day, Union says she doesn't know whether her co-worker
was paralyzed with fear, but she does know that her friend never called the
police.

Union struggles to recall that painful time.  She is sitting in a small room
in a Beverly Hills beauty salon, having her weave redone.  She's wearing a
fashionable cream-colored V-neck sweater.  Her blue jeans are rolled at the
cuff.  She's sitting in a swivel chair, completely unassuming.  she's not
trying to hide the weave, her vulnerability or her past.  She looks you in
the eye and tells you about the night that changed her life.

Looking back, Union says the rapist made what could have proved to be a
deadly error.  "He had put the gun down, like, right next to me," she says,
still amazed by the absurdity of it all.  "[Afterward], he asked me to hand
it to him.  I grabbed it, flipped it over, popped in the clip-and I was
going to shoot him.  I couldn't do it quickly enough."  Union and her
attacker scrambled for the semiautomatic.

"I'd seen on the cop shows that it was only seven bullets," she continues.
"And I tried to shoot it seven times, but the gun jammed."  The assailant
beat Union to a bloody pulp in the fight over the gun.  "It just looked like
I got my ass whupped," she says displaying a gallows humor that she's
developed over the years of reflection and recovery.

Later, authorities discovered that the attacker had actually been employed
at another Payless and had robbed several other stores.  He had even raped
another woman weeks before hitting the store where Union worked.  But
Payless had not warned its employees.  Union later sued the discount shoe
chain for gross negligence and won an undisclosed amount of money.

Union then left Pleasanton for UCLA and eased her pain, in part, by studying
sociology.  Years after the attack, Union was afraid to go to places where a
similar type of crime might take place.  She avoided bank ATMs, as well as
liquor and convenience stores.  She relied heavily on her family and friends
during her recovery.  "My friends that I've known since I was 8 years old,"
she says.  "They were the biggest comforters then."

Today, Union uses the experience from attack and her survival to encourage
other rape victims to overcome the terror and to get on with their lives.
When Union joined a rape-crisis group at UCLA, she found that she was the
only one who had been assaulted by a stranger.  But it doesn't matter
whether or not the victim knows her assailant, Union says.  "When you lose
the right to choose what happens to your body, it's rape."  It has been nine
years since the incident, but Union still experiences an occasional anxiety
attack, particularly when fans recognize and follow her around just for an
autograph.

Perhaps the reason audiences connect with her is because you don't need to
know her story to sense the strength and spirit at her core.  A decade ago,
audiences embraced Julia Roberts for the same reasons.  The question is,
will Hollywood provide roles that will transform her into a leading lady.
In The Brothers, a Sony Pictures release that opens this month, Union plays
a freelance photographer who teaches Morris Chestnut's character a thing or
two about love, cheating and fidelity.  The film also stars Bill Bellamy,
Tatayana Ali and D.L. Hughley.  For Union, it's a start.

Now that "City of Angels" is cancelled, Union can accept some of the movie
roles she has had to turn down because of the show's rigorous weekly
schedule.  Of the show's demise, Union says gleefully, "I can't say my
agents and managers are in tears."  Neither are we.