An accidental path to stardom

These are busy days for actress Gabrielle Union. The next few months will see the release of her first above-the-title lead role in the romantic comedy “Deliver Us From Eva,” as well as two more movies in which she has the female lead -- the Jet Li-DMX martial arts gangster film “Cradle 2 the Grave” and the Will Smith-Martin Lawrence sequel “Bad Boys II.”

During a break in shooting on the Los Angeles set of “The Breakup Handbook,” Union slides unnoticed around a huddle of City Council members who have dropped by to visit her co-star, Jamie Foxx. Slipping into her trailer, she happily tucks into a late afternoon lunch from Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles.

In “Deliver Us From Eva,” opening Friday, Union plays Eva Dandridge, a no-nonsense L.A. health inspector who serves as the tough, de facto matriarch of her three younger sisters. When the men in her siblings’ lives decide they’ve had enough of Eva’s meddling, they contract a lifelong playboy (LL Cool J, in credits for the first time by his real name, James Todd Smith) to tame her shrewish ways. Union shifts between comedy, romance and even drama with the grace and off-handed charm of a true leading lady, commanding the screen to capture and hold the audience’s attention.

The 29-year-old is so far doing quite well in what she openly describes as an accidental career. Born in Omaha and raised largely in the Northern California suburb of Pleasanton, Union was attending UCLA with plans to go on to law school when she took an internship as an office assistant in a modeling agency. After graduation, the agency asked her to work as a model, which then rolled over into small parts on television and eventually in movies.

For now at least, Union is probably best known for her role as Isis, Kirsten Dunst’s nemesis in the 2000 cheerleader comedy “Bring It On,” and for her March 2001 turn as the first African American love interest on the television show “Friends.”

Union first met Gary Hardwick, who has directed her in both “The Brothers” and “Deliver Us From Eva,” when he was brought in to do uncredited rewrites for the Compton Clovers cheerleading squad in “Bring It On.” Union is still surprised by the intense affection that film inspires and caught off-guard by its unlikely devotees.

“That came out almost three years ago,” she says, “and I still get asked as many questions at press junkets about ‘Bring It On’ as I do about whatever movie I’m hawking at the time. I was recently at the W Hotel in San Francisco and these women -- professional, adult women -- told me they were having a ‘Bring It On’ party, where they watch the movie and take sides. They invited me, and I told them I would so come to that party.”

Union is now relatively at ease with the world of romantic comedy, but big-budget action films like “Cradle 2 the Grave” and “Bad Boys II” are another matter. To prepare for the wire work and martial arts fighting in “Cradle,” Union, who estimates she did about 95% of her own stunts for the film, spent the better part of a month training with Jet Li’s fight team, a process she likens to “Tae Bo on crack.”

For “Bad Boys II,” directed by Michael Bay, she expected similar training before shooting began. “That would be called take one,” she says with a laugh. “I assumed there would be a stunt driver, but Michael Bay just said, ‘Get behind the wheel. That’s what action movies are about.’

“I didn’t have my glasses, I’m not the best driver anyway, and soon I’m barreling through a parking garage with a very expensive camera mounted on the hood, a guy hanging off the window trying to punch me in the face, no seatbelt, and I’m shredding the back of the car against cement pillars while Michael just kept yelling, ‘Faster!’ I was shaking and practically in tears. Before long, I was steering with one hand while leaning out the window and shooting an automatic weapon behind me with the other.”

Union exhibits the same fearlessness when discussing the sometimes touchy subject of race in Hollywood. She is quick to downplay the importance of her guest part on “Friends,” although some have nevertheless described it as historic.

“When I took that part,” she says, “a show I was on, ‘City of Angels,’ on another large network, had just been canceled on Monday. I started work on ‘Friends’ on Thursday. I just wanted to be sure my Visa bill got paid. I didn’t set out to be the Rosa Parks of Must-See TV.”

Inevitably, the topic of last year’s Academy Awards and Halle Berry’s win comes up. “Literally, that Monday, the next day, I got calls asking how my life had changed. Halle’s win, realistically speaking, was a source of inspiration for our community and all people of color. It’s a story of triumph.

“But as far as increasing opportunities, her being in movies that gross over $100 million, that’s what makes it OK to have colorblind casting. People want to hang so much on the Oscar, but it’s her whole freaking career that has opened doors.”

For Union, that’s literally so, as she was originally cast as one of the supporting sisters to Berry’s lead in “Deliver Us From Eva.” Once Berry won her Academy Award, with the requisite hike in her fees, she dropped out of the project, making way for Union to take over the title role.

“Once she started really getting paid, she was more than the entire budget of our movie,” Union says. “I was the economical, next-best-thing, blue-light-special choice.

“Let me just say,” she quickly adds, “the fact that we’re still talking about firsts -- first Oscar, first love interest on ‘Friends,’ whatever -- that’s a sad reality. Those questions always come up, and the reality is we shouldn’t be in a position where we’re having these conversations anymore.”

Off-handedly mentioning the LSATs, Union seems surprisingly comfortable with the idea of a life outside acting. She gives her husband, Chris Howard, partial credit for her grounded outlook. A former player with the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars, Howard had his career cut short by an injury and has since returned to college to finish the degree he abandoned for the pro draft.

“When he was playing, I was just the wife,” she says. “We were living in an apartment in Jacksonville, Florida, and when I wasn’t shooting, my days were spent at Target or thinking about curtains and bed ruffles. It’s good to have a reality outside the movies. And he makes sure my head stays appropriately shrunken.”

His injury also gave her a new perspective on her own longevity, she says. “To see someone work so hard for something and still have it taken away, you just never know what might happen,” she says. “Who knows what could be my equivalent to a torn ligament? I’ve already heard people say, ‘She’s like a younger Gabrielle,’ and I’m thinking, Wait, I’m still here!”