Gabrielle Union stars in 'The Perfect Holiday'

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During her school years, Gabrielle Union was into basketball, soccer and track. Nowadays, the actress steers clear of organized sports."I'm a little too crazy competitive," says Union. "I'd be diving for balls and tackling people. And I found that Maxim doesn't like to shoot you when you have bruises and scabs."Maxim's annual list of sexy women isn't exactly the Oscars, but Union takes pride in having made it several times. It plays into her competitive streak."Randomly I ended up a few years ago on the Maxim Hot 100 list, and I was like, 'Oh, that's very flattering,'" says Union, who was No. 67 this year, No. 43 in 2006, No. 95 in 2005, No. 89 in 2003 and No. 52 in 2002. "And then the next year I wasn't on the list, and I became a little like, 'What the (heck) happened?!'"Union, who originally set out to become a lawyer, got serious."I was like, 'Should I send them an essay, ... try to move up?' Then I began to campaign to get back on the list. What started out as something I thought was flattering, I thought was a given, then it's like, 'I've gotta work to be on this Maxim list!'"Union, 35, works hard on her acting as well. She's been in 21 films, plus numerous TV movies and shows, in the past 11 years. Her latest feature, "The Perfect Holiday," now in theaters, reunites her with frequent co-star Morris Chestnut."When I read it I thought it was so charming," she says. "I don't usually get a lot of charming scripts, so it was a nice departure."Union plays Nancy, a woman divorced from a rap star who's so busy taking care of her three kids that she doesn't have time for herself. She longs for a little attention from the opposite sex, never expecting it to come courtesy of a mall Santa and struggling songwriter named Benjamin (Chestnut).Union got the script from Queen Latifah's production company while she was relaxing in Miami after finishing "Daddy's Little Girls."Union had no experience from which to draw for the role."I don't have kids; I don't know anything about what it is to sacrifice for your children," she says. "I had to lean on a lot of my single-parent friends and my mom and my sister to keep me accurate playing a mom."Union would like to have children someday."I gotta find a new husband before I start thinking kids," says Union, who was divorced last year from NFL player Chris Howard of the Jacksonville Jaguars. "But hopefully one day it'll happen."Union says it's hard to know where to look for a man like her romantic catch in "The Perfect Holiday.""Guys that look like Morris? I don't know," she says. "Guys who are like Benjamin, guys who tell you that they sell pens when they're really struggling singer-songwriters? I think you can find those pretty much anywhere. Guys who lie? All over."While fans think of Union as being like the strong, confident women she's played in such films as "Deliver Us From Eva" and "Breakin' All the Rules," she says the persona is pure acting."I'm a great mimic," she says. "I'm a black Catholic. We're like the spotted owl or the white rhino. So I was raised very strictly: You watch what you say, you're polite, you don't talk back, there's no sass. So I think I tend to be drawn to characters where I get to say all the things I ever wanted to say to people and act however I wanted to act but couldn't because I was raised to be a lady and polite."(Contact Betsy Pickle of The Knoxville News Sentinel in Tennessee at www.knoxnews.com.)