The Long Way Home

Through Fame to Forty-Five…And Finally on MY WAY!

By Nia Peeples

At 43, I was in many ways as I was when I was 19: standing on the edge of the world I’d known for near twenty years looking out into the great beyond wondering, “what the hell am I going to do now?” With tremendous excitement and trepidation, hopefulness and confusion, there was this great desire to break away from the roles that had defined me up to then and “find the new me.” The only difference was in my number of options. At 19 I had plenty of choices: college, backpacking through Europe, joining the Peace Corp or getting a waitress job and start auditioning.  At 43 I figured I had only two choices: get a nose, boob and brow lift or look for myself somewhere out there…way out there, by focusing on something bigger, more powerful, more consuming than my own life, my own career. So in the aftermath of the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that struck South East Asia in 2004, I traveled to the wild islands off Sumatra, Indonesia, and joined a rag tag team of rebel relief workers in creating SRO:  Surfzone Relief Operations. Our Mission: to cut through the tidal wave of red tape and bring sustainable aid directly and immediately to those in greatest need. Funny how, in the face of such overwhelming tragedy, so many of the travails on my chosen path-the failed pilots, the fruitless call backs… the cellulite on the back of my thighs that jiggled its way through the rag mags-seemed to so quickly melt away. And it was there, somewhere near the equator on a forgotten sea, somewhere so far away from all the soundstages and back lots and red carpets, that I discovered myself playing the role of a lifetime. My own life, discovered.

I am not a star. I’m a celebrity.  The difference being, I can walk into a grocery store and not be mobbed by every customer but rather, greeted very personably by the employees who will gladly dig deep in the warehouse for that last jar of Tuscan tapenade in exchange for the inside scoop on Brangelina. I have co-starred in 2 hit series and 10 forgettables. My face has been plastered on billboards lining Sunset Blvd and the Champs-Elysses in Paris, as well as the straight to DVD movie on sale at Target.  I have seen my mug 12ft tall on the wall of Tower Records celebrating my number one dance hit that no one can remember.  For 25 years I have gracefully and enthusiastically danced from one pilot season to the next, one production, one studio, one city, one country to the next doing what I love to do whilst providing my children an education, adventure, and a little security. It seemed like everything was in perfect balance. But something was wrong and really had been all along. Like they say, Fame costs.