NIA LONG JOINS SHOWTIME'S "HOUSE OF LIES"

You can see actress Nia Long in a lot of places these days, including Showtime’s sharp-edged comedy “House of Lies.”

She plays Tamara, a character with a conscience, which is almost an anomaly in the cutthroat management-consultant world of Don Cheadle’s Marty Kaan.

“She’s fun and challenging,” says Long. “She seems like a person of great integrity, but then there’s an $80 million deal in front of her. What does she do?”

Tamara has a particularly pivotal role this Sunday night (10 o’clock), and Long says part of the delight for her personally is working with Cheadle.

“He’s an amazing actor and he’s also very generous,” she says. “He shares the light.”

Long, as it happens, shares something with Tamara. They both have been raising young children and are now trying to balance that responsibility with their professional lives.

Brooklyn-born Long has two sons, ages 11 and 1, the younger one with San Antonio Spurs assistant coach Ime Udoka. She says that between the boys and her career, there isn’t much extra time these days.

“By the time I get home, fix their dinners, help with the homework and everything else, I don’t have much of a social life,” she says. “No more all-night parties. Even when I go out, I leave early.”

That doesn’t mean her life is uninteresting.

“I wouldn’t do a reality show,” she says. “I’m too private. It takes a lot of courage to put your life out there life that.

“But almost every day things happen in my own life that make me laugh and think, ‘This is a reality show.’ ”

The 42-year-old Long is best known as Will Smith’s girlfriend on “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air” and later as Officer Sasha Monroe on “Third Watch.” She’s also had roles in movies like “Big Momma’s House” and she voiced Robert Tubbs on “The Cleveland Show.”

Long also did an appearance the late Heavy D’s video “Long Distance Girlfriend.” She says his death in 2011 still troubles her.

“He was my brother,” she says. “He’s the one who told me to take all the right steps, that it’s a marathon and not a sprint.”

Toward that end, she says, she welcomes the breaks that actors inevitably fall into when the phone isn’t ringing.

“I use them to develop as Nia the woman,” she says. “It helps me to maintain a balance.”

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