Gabrielle Union

Union was born on October 29, 1972, in Omaha, Nebraska, the daughter of Theresa (née Glass), a phone company manager and social worker, and Sylvester E. Union, a military sergeant. She was raised Catholic. During her childhood, she was taught to be "an independent woman, standing on my own two feet, and that's the road I opted to take." According to Union, her mother taught her to have a "world perspective" and took her to a gay pride parade at the age of eight after the family moved to Pleasanton, California. She attended Foothill High School where she was a year-round student athlete, competing in Varsity soccer, track, and basketball. Union dated fellow student Jason Kidd during her junior year. Union's parents divorced after 30 years of marriage. She said, "They handled their divorce and our subsequent transition into a blended family with grace, dignity and respect. They always put us first and didn't involve us. I'm lucky that I can just mirror what my parents did and always put the kids first. They're pretty awesome. I'm lucky." Union grew up with self-esteem issues relating to colorism, as one of the few African-American children in her environment. When Union was younger, she believed that "blonde was the ideal of beauty, and if I looked nothing like that, then I must be ugly." On her college football memories, Union reflected, "In my family if you couldn't talk Cornhusker football—that means knowing the Blackshirt defense, knowing the I-back formation—then you don't get to have an opinion. When I first toured the Nebraska campus and I saw Turner Gill walk, I freaked out. That was like the biggest star-struck moment I've probably ever had in my life. But it's because I grew up in a household that always talked specifically Cornhusker football and Big 8 sports at the time." During the summer before starting her sophomore year of college at UCLA, at the age of 19, Union was attacked and raped at gunpoint at her part-time job at a Payless shoe store by a robber. Union has stated that she would not have survived the attack had it not been for lessons she learned by watching Oprah Winfrey's talk show. She later successfully sued Payless for negligence, alleging that the store failed to warn employees about the assailant, who had been positively identified robbing another Payless location prior to when he raped her. Union has a bachelor's degree in sociology from UCLA.