Peta Wilson is about to dash into a hospital room, punch a Russian army officer in the face and knock him to the ground. She gets the dash and the punch down pat. But Wilson, a 26-year-old Australian with little TV experience, isn't sure what to do next. Director Ken Girotti ponders, then says, "Give me a TV moment."

Nikita is definitely Wilson's TV moment. Based on the 1990 French film, "La Femme Nikita," the Toronto-shot thriller has Wilson in the title role, playing a streetkid turned undercover agent for a mysterious group of highly trained killers. A former model and stage actress, the stunning blond beat out 400 others for the part. She clinched it during her audition before the head of Warner Bros. - by picking up the startled executive's prized basketball, signed by several NBA stars, and bouncing it off the wall during a scene. "I wasn't intimidated, and I think that is a lot of who Nikita is as well," she says.

Wilson admits this is only her "fourth job as an actress in the film business. I'm just keeping my eyes open, listening and learning." Especially from Roy Dupuis, the Quebec TV sensation (Emily, "Million Dollar Babies") who co-stars as Michael, Nikita's mysterious colleague. "He's so beautiful and sexy - he's got a stillness about him that I'm trying to capture," she says. "She's generous ... and has so much energy," says Dupuis.

Scanning rushes on a monitor between takes, Wilson does seem incapable of doing less than three things at once. Seated on a couch, she fast-forwards through the tape, pressing the button with a broom handle, while sipping spring water and balancing a lap full of CDs. She's listening to Burt Bacharach's "The Look of Love" on her headphones. "My boyfriend (film director Damian Harris) played it for me one night. When I'm missing him I put it on." The two met five years ago in Los Angeles, where Wilson lives when not on location in Toronto.

Lighting a cigarett, Wilson looks up at the billowing yellow chiffon sheets that hide the ugly ceiling tiles in her makeshift dressing room. Though she has filled three fat art books with notes about her character, the actress doesn't take Nikita too seriously. "She's an awkward panther - the Mr. Magoo of spies," she says. Her all-black wardrobe confirms the panther part, right down to the furry Prada boots.

A large map of North America adorns the door of her dressing room, a nod to the actress's love of travel. "My father was in the army, so we moved around a lot," says Wilson, who attended 15 different schools growing up. "You sort of act in a way to fit in. I would observe for a few days and then be good at what they did."

Still, even nomads need company now and then. So for the series, Wilson brought her grandmother out from Australia. "I was working 17-, 18-hour days and couldn't even run the bath, I was so tired and sore. Nana just tucks me into bed and says my prayers with me - just re-centres me, really."

So far, there's been no word on what her military dad thinks of the spy series. "My father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather, they're all war men. And here I am playing a gunslinger." Wilson grins widely. "They've always thought I was a bit crazy."