Today we’d like to introduce you to Dawna Lee Heising
Hi Dawna Lee, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I am a working actor and am the VP of Aki Aleong’s Mustard Seed Media Group. I have acted in over 250 feature films, including Param Gill’s “Bad President”, starring Eddie Griffin, and “Alien Storm”, starring Tom Arnold. I am honored to have won over 820 film festival awards and over five hundred Best Actress awards. I am trained in Tang Soo Do martial arts, ballet, and pole dancing.
I earned a B.S. Degree in Business Management and MBA from Pepperdine University. My uncle is legendary director of photography Tak Fujimoto (“Silence of the Lambs,” Sixth Sense”) and my cousins George Daugherty and David Wong won a Primetime Emmy Award for “Peter and the Wolf on Broadway.”
I was very honored to win the 2024 Living Legend Award at the Universe Multicultural Film Festival. I am also a former Miss Los Angeles Chinatown, Ms. US World, Ms. World, Ms. Universe, Miss San Francisco Universe, Miss Orange County Universe, Miss California Hemisphere and Mrs. California United States, among many other titles. I was the Queen of the 2021 Kaiju Film Festival, the 2019 Hollywood Silver Screen Film Festival Queen, and the 2018 WIND International Film Festival Queen. I won Media Star of the Year at the 2024 Golden Gate Martial Arts Hall of Honors Awards.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Early in my career, I auditioned for the role of Cleo the Snake Dancer on the final episode of “Magnum P.I.” with Tom Selleck. “Magnum P.I.” was shot in Hawaii where it was illegal to film with snakes, so they were looking for an actress in California. I was so excited when I got the role, and I thought it was my BIG break! I danced with the snake all day with the trainer just off camera. When the two-part finale screened, I saw that my dance with the snake had turned into a HUGE billboard behind Tom Selleck sitting on the curb. I was disappointed, but I ended up getting my long-time agent Ray Cavaleri from the role.
I left show business for a time and returned to school. I earned a B.S. in Business Management and MBA from Pepperdine University. My mother helped me raise my two daughters while I worked and finished my education. My mother is the reason my two daughters are so successful in their careers, and have remained humble, empathetic, considerate, kind and, most importantly, NICE people to this day.
I returned to the entertainment industry full-time 15 years ago. I am grateful that my mother’s help allowed me to finish my education. My MBA at Pepperdine University helped prepare me for success in the film industry.
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Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I have acted in over 250 feature films and have won over 800 film festival awards. I am the VP of Aki Aleong’s Mustard Seed Media Group and earned a B.S. Degree in Business Management and MBA from Pepperdine University.
I have won over 500 Best Actress awards for feature films and television. I was honored to win the Living Legend Award at the 2024 Universe Multicultural Film Festival. I also received the Elite Martial Arts Spirit Award at the 2023 Golden Gate Martial Arts Hall of Honors and won “Actress & Action Star of the Year” at the 2021 USA Martial Arts Hall of Fame Awards. I was inducted into the WorldFilmGeek.com Hall of Fame for 2023, alongside Diane Franklin and Mark Patton. I won “Media Star of the Year” at the 2024 Golden Gate Martial Arts Hall of Honors Awards.
I was honored to work with the great Eddie Griffin in Param Gill’s “Bad President”, which premiered at the 2020 Cannes Film Festival, and with Tom Arnold in Adam Werth’s “Alien Storm” from Mahal Empire Productions. I play Lisa in “PTSD: A Soldier’s Revenge,” which stars Daniel Baldwin, Tom Sizemore, and Robert LaSardo, and Ms. Fairchild in Diana Carter’s “Recipes for Love”, starring Daniel Baldwin and Nicholas Turturro.
In 2023, I played Chrystal (Miss Third World) in Tom Lopilato’s comedy “WordLotto.” It was written by Tom, directed Johnny Baca, filmed and edited by Mark Andrews, and cast by Leila Sharafi. It has won over 150 film festival awards, including a Telly Award in 2024. Mark was the DP on “Bad President,” and I am grateful to him for recommending me for Chrystal. A film festival judge wrote in his notes: “Dawna Lee Heising had one of the most visually striking characters I’ve ever seen in a film!”
I have always known that education and training are especially important in any career, including in the film industry. I earned an A.A. in Theater Arts from Fullerton College, where I studied the Stanislavski Method with Sal Romeo. I later joined Sal‘s Friends & Artists Theatre company on Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles. I won Miss San Francisco Universe while attending U.C. Berkeley, and was discovered for “Fantasy Island,” where I played Miss Hawaii. I continue to study Acting with Matthew Arkin at South Coast Repertory and with Karole Foreman, and just performed Lady Macbeth’s Act Five, Scene One monologue at the Collage Theatre in San Pedro, California with the Actors Jungle Repertory.
My career goals are to do lead roles in high quality projects. I want to become the best actor that I can be. I have learned through experience that a great script is the backbone of a great project, and I am becoming much more selective in the roles that I accept. I started my acting career in big budget films and in network television and I want to return to that level of quality.
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
The Covid-19 crisis reinforced the importance of family to me. It was hard during the Coronavirus quarantine to see my family as much as I wanted to, but I visited my mother every week and bring her food and talk through the screen door. The quarantine forced my husband, who is a Certified Financial Planner (CFP), a Type A personality and who is even more driven and successful than I am, to work from home and brought us closer together.
To continually improve takes hard work, dedication, education, meditation, and drive. The pandemic made it harder to work and achieve my career goals since there were fewer jobs. During the pandemic, I exercised every day, studied every day to learn something new and continued to stay connected with the important people in my life, especially with my family. I continued to train with my KwanJangNim Grand Master Rick St. Clair through the internet and learned to use the Jo-Staff and Kali sticks.
Many years ago, when I was attending U.C. Berkeley, I was assigned a book called “The Psychology of Winning” by Dr. Denis Waitley, and I have always followed the ten principles of positive self-awareness, positive self-esteem, positive self-control, positive self-motivation, positive self-expectancy, positive self-image, positive self-direction, positive self-discipline, positive self-dimension, and positive self-projection. What these tenets have in common are positivity, and I believe that being positive is vital to success and having the life that you desire and becoming the person you want to be.
I believe in Carpe Diem and living for the day. I have always tried to make the most out of every day because life is short, and we are not promised tomorrow. I have never been afraid to go after what I want in life. I have taught my children that the sky is the limit to what we can accomplish in this life and that we are only limited by how hard we are willing to work to achieve our goals.
I have raised my two daughters to set their sights high and to realize the value of a good education. My daughter Marissa is an executive for a court reporting systems company and my daughter Dr. Misty Richards is a psychiatrist at UCLA. Both of my daughters are incredible mothers, and are kind, empathetic, generous, and humble. We all understand that we need to teach our children that the most important thing in the world is kindness and being empathetic to those around us. We need to teach our children to care for those who are less fortunate than ourselves.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.dawnaleeheising.me
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dawnaleeheising
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dawnaleeheising
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/dawnaleeheising
- Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/dawnaleeheising
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/eyeonentertainment
- Other: https://www.dawnaleeheisingofficial.com
Image Credits
Mark Oeffler
