`Walker' is a family affair for Nia Peeples

When Nia Peeples decided to join the cast of CBS' Saturday-night staple "Walker, Texas Ranger," it wasn't because she thought it was the world's greatest acting opportunity.

"Honestly," she says, "this was a family choice. This was not a career choice. This was definitely a family choice. But I've been doing this for 15 years, and I'm growing and I'm changing and my desires are changing, and I'm not great at certain battles, where getting certain jobs are concerned. I think, when I first began, my work was much more exciting than my life, which was what drove me to my work.

"You were able to experience things through characters that you would never be, but you could be on television or in film. It took you to exotic places and you got to learn things you wouldn't get to learn anywhere else. Now, as I get older, my personal life gets more rich. It's funny how it shifts. Now my personal life, I enjoy that so much more, that sometimes my work takes away from that."

In late 1997, Peeples married stuntman and martial artist Lauro Chartrand, who also now works on "Walker," and they are the parents of a 1 1/2 year-old daughter. In Los Angeles, Peeples frequently found herself off doing one job or another, while her husband was working elsewhere.

"I turned to my husband a couple of months ago and said, `You know what, we're living together, for goodness sakes. We've been married for years, but we're actually living together.' That's a different thing.

"It's like having a new roommate, now you've got a whole other baby who depends on you for everything."

Joining the cast of the Chuck Norris action-drama (which airs Saturday at 10 p.m. on CBS-TV, and weeknights at 8 on USA Network) as rookie Texas Ranger Sydney Cooke meant relocating to Texas for the California native, her husband - born in Seattle but raised in Saskatchewan, Canada - their baby, and her 10-year-son from a previous marriage.

"Life is interesting in Texas," says Peeples. "Dallas is Dallas. I grew up in L.A., and I never thought I would miss it, but I miss it. I miss my home. There are pockets of L.A. that are absolutely beautiful, and I happen to live in one of those."

Is the work-and-home togetherness with Chartrand putting a strain on the relationship? "No, no," says Peeples. "It's just enough togetherness. He doesn't work the whole time I'm working. He either works stunts separately from me on the show, fighting, or he works choreographing my fights, which is when we get to work together. Then he goes home.

"So it's great, actually, because you wind up working so many hours on a show, that it's nice to be there with your other half, feeling like you're actually moving forward together."

Chartrand's biography says that, ironically, he wanted to be a stuntman after seeing a Chuck Norris movie. "He did. It is really funny," says Peeples. "He's so funny. He grew up in the middle of nowhere in Saskatchewan. I don't think he had running water until he was 15. It's a pretty wild place up there. So he's a strange mixture of cowboy and backwoodsman and karate champ. He's an interesting guy, for sure."