Dawna Lee Heising is a working actress, member of SAG-AFTRA, and is the Vice President of Aki Aleong’s Mustard Seed Media Group. She plays the lead role of Vivica Stevens in Dustin Ferguson’s sci-fi/martial arts/action drama ROBOWOMAN, also featuring Aki Aleong, Laurene Landon and Mel Novak. She also plays a Red Army fighter in Ferguson’s Nemesis 5: The New Model (2017), which is executive produced by the legendary Albert Pyun, who wrote, produced and directed Nemesis, Nemesis 2: Nebula, Nemesis 3: Time Lapse and Nemesis 4: Death Angel. The stunt coordinator for Nemesis 5: The New Model is filmmaker and Black Belt martial artist Shaun Vetick, and the fight scenes are intense. The amazing scripts for ROBOWOMAN and Nemesis 5 were written by Mike Reeb. Dawna also played Camilla in Dustin’s home invasion film from Wild Eye Releasing, and will play an assassin in world champion martial artist JJ Stomp’s “Asian Assassin”. Dawna is honored to be cast in the great Albert Pyun’s upcoming television series Bad Ass Angels.
Dawna was very fortunate to have a scene in Gregory Hatanaka’s Revenge of the Samurai Cop where she teaches the great Tommy Wiseau how to use a sword. In reality, Tommy trained her off-camera! Dawna has also worked with Ted V. Mikels’ in Paranormal Extremes: Text Messages from the Dead; Ten Violent Women; Part Two; Ron Becks and Tina Le’s Las Vegas Vietnam; Richard Rossi’s Canaan Land; Gregory Blair’s Garden Party Massacre; and upcoming films with filmmakers Albert Pyun, Gregory Hatanaka, Aki Aleong, Dustin Ferguson, Jake Zelch, Dustin Kay, Bobbie Easley and William X. Lee.
Dawna has practiced ballet and jazz dancing her entire life, and has taken pole dancing and kickboxing for the last ten years. She trained in Tang Soo Do and PaKua martial arts for two years to prepare for Nemesis 5: The New Model, Asian Assassin and RoboWoman. Dawna is continuing her martial arts training in Tang Soo Do.
In addition, Dawna has taken acting workshops at the world-famous South Coast Repertory Theatre for many years, and her most recent workshop at South Coast Repertory was with Matthew Arkin, son of Alan Arkin. She was a member of the Friends and Artists Theater Company in Los Angeles for over a decade, and has trained with Sal Romeo; Michael Sewell; Guy Stockwell; Tim Russ; Richard Hatch; and at Tepper-Gallegos; Fullerton College; Cypress College; and at U.C. Berkeley.
Dawna won Best Host for her television show “Eye on Entertainment” on Amazon Prime at the 2017 WIND International Film Festival, and “Eye on Entertainment” was awarded Best Television Show. She won Best Actress for her role as Naomi Perkins in “Teachers’ Day” at the 2014 Mockfest Film Festival, and was honored with a Film and Television Achievement Award at the 2017 Los Angeles Nollywood Film Festival. She also won a 2013 EOTM Award for Outstanding Television Talk Show Host for “Eye on Entertainment”.
Dawna has a B.S. in Business Management and MBA from Pepperdine University, and rose to the level of Vice President of Marketing at technology companies in the business world. Her husband Paul is a Certified Financial Planner and has been named a Five Star Wealth Manager in Los Angeles Magazine for the past six years. Her daughter Marissa is a pharmaceutical representative for Sanofi-Aventis and her daughter Misty is a psychiatrist at UCLA. Misty was also a Fulbright Scholar and spent a year in Japan. Dawna’s uncle is famed Director of Photography Tak Fujimoto, and her cousins are Emmy Award winners David Ka Lik Wong and George Daugherty for “Peter and the Wolf on Broadway”.
Dawna is the current Mrs. Golden Global and Miss WIND International Film Festival. She is the winner of Ms. World 2008; Ms. Universe 2009; Mrs. California United States 2000; Mrs. American Achievement 2001; and Miss Galactic Film Festival 2015. She is a past winner of Miss Los Angeles Chinatown; Miss Orange County Universe: Miss San Francisco Universe; and Miss California Hemisphere, among other titles. She has worked as a model for Ujena Swimwear; Venus Swimwear; Catalina; Bikini Magazine; Glamour Magazine; FVM Global Magazine; The Digital Dead Magazine; Glitz Magazine; and CVH 1st Class Magazine.
