Nia Peeples Movies and Career Information

Virenia Gwendolyn "Nia" Peeples on December 10, 1961 in Hollywood, California) is an American R&B and dance music singer and actress. She is perhaps best known for her role as Nicole Chapman on Fame. She is also known for her role as Karen Taylor Winters on The Young and the Restless and as Sydney Cooke on Walker, Texas Ranger. Her maternal grandparents are both immigrants from the Philippines. Her father has Black,Scottish, Irish, English, Native American and Italian ancestry. Her mother is of Filipino, German and Spanish descent. She was raised in West Covina, California. She attended UCLA on a music scholarship, during which time she performed as Liberace's opening act in Las Vegas on weekends. Peeples started her career as part of the performance group The Young Americans. In 1988 she hit #1 on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart with "Trouble," which climbed to #35 on the Hot 100. Her most successful single is "Street Of Dreams," which hit #12 on the Hot 100 in 1991. She made a music video in 1986 of "All You Can Dream", directed by Alan Bloom and conceptualised by Keith Williams, for the purposes of promoting the values of UCLA. She appeared in Prince's video for Raspberry