Gabrielle Union got her first breakthrough role starring in the cult classic Bring It On in the year 2000. Before becoming an actor, Union would’ve never guessed she’d be in movies. At one point, she believed being a video vixen would’ve been the peak of her career.
How Gabrielle Union fell into acting
| River Callaway/Getty Images
Acting was the furthest thing from Union’s mind back in her younger years. Her path to Hollywood started when she was looking for ways to earn extra credit for school. She was attending UCLA at the time, and was told that an internship could help earn her the necessary credits to graduate.
Speaking with The Young Man and the Three, Union revealed she interned for an agency that allowed her to work with models and actors. At the end of the internship, she was approached for a modeling opportunity herself. But the first thing that came to mind when she got the offer wasn’t being a film star.
“I had such low self-esteem, I wanted to be a video hoe so bad. That’s all I wanted,” she said. “I didn’t wanna be in movies, I didn’t wanna be in commercials, I wanted to be the chosen video hoe. Well, that’s what we called them then, now they are ‘video vixens’, ‘IG models,’ yeah. But I wanted to be, like, a hot b****.”
For Union, that meant being a background dancer in music videos.
“It wasn’t really the desired look at the time. I was literally auditioning for the ‘California Love’ video with Tupac and 20 of his closest friends,” Union said.
But eventually, Union decided to do acting when her music video career wasn’t doing well. Back then, she actually had an easier time getting acting gigs than she did for music. However, after all of her career successes, Union quipped that she still had dreams of doing “California Love.”
Gabrielle Union once named the one blockbuster she thought would take her career to the next level
Union booked several acting roles throughout the 90s. But she didn’t get her first major film opportunity until the teen comedy 10 Things I Hate About You. The movie set a high standard for Union’s future film projects. She found herself working with actors like Julia Styles and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who all seemingly provided a pleasant experience on set. Union expected other films to be similar behind-the-scenes.
“I always speak of that experience as such a magical time, because I really thought that was how every movie experience was going to be for me — and it was not,” she once told Entertainment Weekly. “But that first one, it just set the bar so high.”
But she felt Bad Boys 2 would’ve been her ticket to true mega-stardom. It was a good guess, seeing as it was a sequel to one of the 90’s biggest blockbusters. She beat several other actors to star alongside Martin Lawrence and Will Smith as special agent Sydney Burnett. However, the role didn’t have the kind of impact she might’ve been looking for.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, my career is about to take off — this is it!’ And then I waited and I waited and I waited,” she said.
It seemed Union just had to wait a little longer than she intended to. She was able to get a spin-off series out of her role in the short-lived series L.A.’s Finest. The television series would have Sydney as the main character, allowing Union to explore the role in a way she couldn’t in the Bad Boys sequel.
“Thankfully, she was so underdeveloped because it wasn’t really about her,” Union said. “There’s so much more to Syd than even I realized.”
