Age: 53
female
Gabrielle Monique Union-Wade (born October 29, 1972) is an American actress. She is known for her roles in The Brothers (2001), Deliver Us from Eva (2003), Bad Boys II (2003), Daddy's Little Girls (2007), Think Like a Man (2012), Think Like a Man Too (2014), and the remake of Cheaper by the Dozen (2022). She also starred as the lead in the BET drama series Being Mary Jane (2013-2019), for which she has received an NAACP Image Award, and in the crime series L.A.'s Finest (2019-2020) - a spinoff series for her character Syd in Bad Boys II.. She also had starring roles in the CBS medical drama series City of Angels (2000) and in the films Cradle 2 the Grave (2003), Neo Ned (2005), Cadillac Records (2008), Top Five (2014), Breaking In (2018), and The Perfect Find (2023). She has also co-starred in the films The Birth of a Nation (2016), Almost Christmas (2016), and Sleepless (2017). In high school, Union was an all-star point guard in basketball and a year-round athlete, also playing in soccer and running track. She went on to the University of Nebraska before moving on to Cuesta College. She eventually transferred to UCLA and earned a degree in sociology. While studying there, she interned at the Judith Fontaine Modeling & Talent Agency to earn extra academic credits. Invited by the agency's owner, Judith Fontaine, she started working as a model to pay off college loans. Her career began in the 1990s, when she made dozens of appearances on TV sitcoms prior to landing supporting roles in 1999 teen films She's All That and 10 Things I Hate About You. She rose to greater prominence the following year, after she landed her breakthrough role in the teen film Bring It On. Bring It On helped push her into the mainstream and she began gaining more exposure. She was cast in her first leading role in the 2003 film Deliver Us from Eva with rapper L.L. Cool J. In 2003, she landed the role of Will Smith's girlfriend/Martin Lawrence's sister Sydney Burnett in the film Bad Boys II, and she starred with Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx in the film Breakin' All the Rules in 2004. She then starred in the short-lived 2005 ABC series Night Stalker. She has also starred in the independent drama films Neo Ned and Constellation, the latter of which was released to theaters. She won an award for Best Actress in Neo Ned at the Palm Beach International Film Festival, and the film received awards at several festivals. Outside of acting, she has written four books: two memoirs, titled We're Going to Need More Wine (2017) and You Got Anything Stronger? (2021), and two children's books, titled Welcome to the Party (2020), and Shady Baby (2021).
New York City. Present day. Two families control the city's most powerful real estate empires — the Montagues, rooted in Brooklyn's old money and new media, and the Capulets, whose glass towers define Midtown's skyline. Their rivalry is old, brutal, and deeply personal. Street-level fistfights between their employees and associates have already drawn the attention of the NYPD. One more incident, the mayor warns, and both families lose their operating licenses. Romée Montague (20, she/her) is the youngest daughter of the Montague empire — brilliant, impulsive, haunted by a past heartbreak with a woman named Rosie that left her cold and directionless. Her cousin Benny is her best friend, her protector, and her wildest accomplice. To shake Romée out of her funk, Benny drags her, disguised, into a glamorous Capulet rooftop gala. There, Romée sees Jules Capulet (18, he/him) — understated, quietly beautiful, with a sharp wit he keeps carefully hidden from his overbearing mother. They speak. They dance. They don't know each other's names until it's already too late. What follows is five breathless days and nights across the city: secret rooftop meetings, a midnight elopement arranged by Friar Lena (a progressive community chaplain), a duel in a Bronx parking lot that ends in blood, banishment, a desperate plan, a sleeping drug, a delayed message, and a crypt beneath an old Brooklyn cathedral where everything unravels. VERONA does not try to save them. It asks why — in a city of eight million people, with every resource at their fingertips — two young people still chose the oldest, most tragic path. And it answers: because the world around them never gave them a real choice.
