Heidi Elizabeth Philipsen was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan to Judith Huntington, a chemist, and Dale Johnson-Philipsen, a commercial air pilot and entrepreneur. She graduated from the University of Michigan Residential College with an independent liberal arts major in Film/Theatre & German Literature, and after spending a year abroad program in Freiburg, Germany, moved to Berlin where she found work in English-speaking theatre, broadcast TV, and film.
As a member of several prominent industry associations, including the Producers' Guild of America, Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Actors Equity Association, New York Women in Film & Television, Women in Film & Television - Germany, Pro Quote Film, the Alliance of Women Directors, the University of Michigan, Columbia University, UCLA Professional Screenwriting Program, and Motion Picture Institute Alumni Associations, Heidi holds a "Near-Native Fluency in the German Language" certification from the Goethe Institute.
Heidi is best known for her roles in films, including major motion pictures and independent features such as Darcy, Marcy, Hobo HeySues, and Thirsty.
In addition to her film work, Heidi is a classically trained actress with experience in both German and English theatre, having apprenticed at Theatre 89 in Berlin, where she worked alongside the best of the best, including the Berliner Ensemble, Deutsches Theater Berlin, and Maxim Gorki Theater. She has also acted and directed at the Friends of Italian Opera English Theatre - now known as The English Theatre in Berlin.
Heidi has further trained with some of the best in the industry, at Stella Adler Studios and Terry Schreiber Studios in NYC, excelling in Advance Scene Study classes with master teachers Patrick Quagliano and Terry Schreiber. She has also trained in Chelsea, Michigan, with Guy Sanville at Acclaimed actor Jeff Daniel's Equity Theater, The Purple Rose.
In the world of international broadcast television, Heidi worked several years in Berlin for DW-TV, on camera and off, first as a daily weather person for "The Journal" and its global audience of 28 million viewers weekly, and then onto "Reporting from the Red Carpet" at the Berlin International Film Festival, where she covered A-List Films, their directors, producers, and stars, interviewing personalities and VIPs such as George Clooney, Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Foxx, Shirley McClaine, Bruce Willis, Bono, Wim Wenders, Ice-Cube, Gong-Li, Terence Malick, P.T. Anderson, Joseph Fiennes, Milla Jovovich, and Denzel Washington.
Heidi also has a bit of the "Travel Guide" Host in her, having traveled, both field producing and TV hosting, from countries such as Denmark, Belgium, France, Poland, Austria, and Germany.
Her focus is on producing, acting in, and directing feature films.
