Nebraska: Gabrielle Union

Nebraska: Gabrielle Union

Would you like to know a little more about Gabrielle Union? Well, as the title of one of her most famous movies says, 'Bring it on!' Union was born on Omaha in Nebraska to Catholic parents, one of whom was a sergeant in the United States military. While that might sound like a conservative background, she says her mother always reminded her to take on a 'world perspective,' and when she was eight, she was taken to a gay pride parade to learn tolerance and respect for others. By that point, they'd left Nebraska behind and moved to California.

When she graduated her degree was in sociology, but she'd already decided she was going to pursue acting before trying to get a 'regular' 9 to 5. 'Bring It On' made her name in the year 2000, but she'd already appeared in several films by then including 'She's All That,' and '10 Things I Hate About You.' In her book 'We're Going to Need More Wine,' released in 2017, she talks about her experience as a sexual assault survivor. That ties into her activism for causes which seek to prevent violence against women.

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Did You Know...

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Celebrities are no strangers to changing their looks for a role. And in some instances, they have to get pretty extreme. From 500-calorie-a-day diets to drinking pints of ice cream, Actors and actresses know what it takes to change their bodies in preparation for a new film.

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Charlize Theron is no stranger to gaining and losing weight for movie roles, as we remember her transformation in Monster. Charlize Theron gained close to 50 pounds for her role as Marlo in Tully. Theron said that “for the first time in my life I was eating so much processed foods and I drank way too much sugar. … I remember having to set my alarm in the middle of the night in order to just maintain the weight.”

III

You’re used Chris Hemsworth's hulk-like figure in Thor, but In the Heart of the Sea required a totally different diet. The movie required the cast members lose a ton of weight to make their stuck-at-sea plight more believable. Chris Hemsworth said there were days when all he ate was one boiled egg, a couple of crackers, and a celery stick.

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Anne Hathaway wanted to get serious for her role in Les Misérables, as she was playing Fantine, a starving prostitute with tuberculosis. So Anne Hathaway went on a diet of “rabbit food” to drop 25 pounds. Hathaway explained her diet was essentially just starving herself, but she didn’t want to give details, as she doesn’t want to encourage anyone to copy her emaciated look. She did note that she “just had to stop eating for a total of 13 days shooting,” however. And at one point, her bones became so frail that she reportedly broke her arm.

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Matthew McConaughey's portrayal of Ron Woodruff in Dallas Buyers Club, a man with HIV/AIDS, was spot-on, earning him the title of best actor at the Oscars. But it also required a serious physical transformation. Matthew McConaughey said he lost 38 pounds for the role. During filming, he said he lost a lot of energy from eating so little — and he hit plenty of plateaus along the way. Finally, with a strict diet, he got down to 143 pounds. And while he did cardio to help with the weight loss, he said it was 90% what he was eating and portion size.

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Hilary Swank had to put on 23 pounds of pure muscle for her role as a boxer in Million Dollar Baby. The process doesn’t sound easy, however. “I started working out five hours a day — I had to eat 210 grams of protein a day,” Swank said. She also mentioned that she had to consume 60 egg whites per day, and when that proved too difficult, she had to drink them. And to keep the muscle on, she would get up and drink protein shakes in the middle of the night.

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