Today we’d like to introduce you to Heidi Van Horne
Hi Heidi, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I am an indie filmmaker, photographer, author and actress – basically, I am an artist of many genres.. Raised in Houston, I studied musical theater on Broadway as a teen, spent over two decades as a working actress in Los Angeles, and have been living back home in Texas, where it all began, for a few years now.
I’ve been in the entertainment and story-telling industry for most of my life, but it was here in Austin where I landed my first SAG acting role in the early 90s, in a tiny part as a hazed freshman snob in Richard Linklater’s seminal Austin flick, Dazed and Confused. I went on to become a working actor in LA, booking small roles on tv in popular shows like ER, The Gilmore Girls and The OC, as well as commercials and leading in indie projects. While feeling creatively frustrated waiting on auditions, I started doing artistic photoshoots, and ended up becoming well known as a modern retro pinup model and cover girl, landing numerous magazine covers, book covers, albums covers, ad campaigns, tv appearances and more.
My love of the classics and life as a car chick in an all girl classic car club led me to being featured in a cover story for the Houston Chronicle, which then turned into a weekly column about cars for the paper and syndicated in papers across the country for Hearst for 11 years. I spent a lot of years doing appearances at car shows around the country and overseas, taking pictures with and of classic cars and signing photos for fans.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has definitely not been a smooth road, but hey, a smooth sea never made a skillful sailor, right?
I grew up poor in a nice area of town, so making a couple bucks stretch and look like you spent a hundred has been a long-honed skill my mom taught us out of necessity.
I try to find the lesson in struggles and mine something positive from even the worst situations, but over the years and decades, I’ve dealt with toxic work environments, abusive relationships, loss of loved ones, financial instability, health scares, Me Too moments and more.
I think in the entertainment industry, the fact that I know who I am and make the right choices for me, not necessarily the popular choice or the one that is most financially profitable, but the ones that I believe in and are right for me in that moment, has likely both hurt and helped me. I am not here to take the path that others have taken or others tell me to take, but the one that is meant for me, and sometimes that is hard, but ultimately the right way to go.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I’ve said that “a complicated relationship with nostalgia is an oft-recurring theme” in my work. From writing about old cars to shooting retro pinup and period piece films, reflecting on the past is something that has always intrigued me, yet doing so from your current vantage point adds a new dynamic to it that can shift the tone or focus. Time also sometimes further separates our memory from reality. My production company name, Rack Focus Pictures, is all about shifting and seeing things from a different point of view. (It is also a filmmaking term that literally means to shift focus and perspective to/from foreground to background.)
My most recent short film, “broken home movies”, is a black and white, experimental ,avant-garde piece, shot on Super8mm, about family dynamics and the conflicted choice of motherhood over the decades. Shot in a found footage style and featuring music from Moby, it won an award at a festival in Italy last year. I was in the middle of editing it when the Dobbs decision came down, and it clarified for me some of the mood, as well as solidified the character names, who are each named after the era which they represent.
I am currently in pre production on some shooting I plan to do in Yokohama, as well as preparing for an entry to the famous “Straight 8” film festival, where all the editing is done in camera and you don’t see your film until the premiere! I’m enjoying being away from Hollywood and having the freedom to get a little more experimental and weird with my filmmaking, taking chances and doing projects that intrigue me.
As for my photography, I had my most recent solo show down in Buda this spring, “Where the Wheels Take Me”, featuring a mix of my most recent automotive photography, portraits and architectural photography, and I am looking to move into shooting more studio portrait photography in 2025.
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
It’s good to be hard working and hustle, but if you’re looking for a career and not just a gig, you have to know that it’s okay to take time when life requires it of you. You’re doing a marathon not a sprint. Sometimes you need that hustler mentality, but other times you need to listen to your body, or be there for a loved one, or whatever it may be, and you have to know that it is okay, and you can keep creating and working – a break is not the end unless you make it so.
Work hard, but don’t forget to be kind to yourself, there are enough things in life that will be hard for you, and people stacking the odds against you – you can’t be another obstacle, you have to be your own cheerleader and hype man. Be good to others, but also be good to you – it really is no one else’s job but yours.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.heidivanhorne.com and vintagevanhorne.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/heidivanhorne, www.instagram.com/vintagevanhorne, and www.instagram.com/rackfocuspictures
- Facebook: www.Facebook.com/therealheidivanhorne and www.Facebook.com/vintagevanhorne
- Youtube: https://www.YouTube.com/therealheidivanhorne
Image Credits
in order:
main image – Isaac Rowry
Susana Clark Vestige Photography
bts “broken home movies”
self portrait
Heidi Van Horne
official poster “broken home movies”
Heidi Van Horne
Heidi Van Horne
Heidi Van Horne
