Dawn Olivieri spent her formative years in the company of daydreams and farm animals, with little outside socialization. As a result, Olivieri found herself fostering a near feral intelligence that incorporated an instinctive literacy of the body and the language that it speaks. It was this off-the-beaten-path start to life that laid the groundwork for what was to become a journey filled with adventure, complications, and a powerful thirst for self-discovery. Failed attempts to conform at an early age encouraged Olivieri to embrace her exclusion, diving into the fantasy world of books and science fiction,

“There never really seemed to be a place where I fit aside from these stories that would consume my reality, I always had a very different perspective on everything around me.”

As with many artists, art in the form of music gave her a new found companionship. Learning first the Saxaphone, her instinctive enchantment with the unusual drew her to the bassoon, an instrument that, like Olivieri, was off the beaten path. Just as books and fantasy provided an escape from social isolation, music allowed Olivieri to immerse herself in another dimension. Her embodied form of expression led to a scholarship and first chair placement in the Pinellas Youth Symphony, as well as her first exposure to musical theatre.

It wasn’t until high school that Olivieri’s desire to push the boundaries began to open doors of darkness. Coupled with an intrigued awareness of her distinctive looks and a talent for renovating the truth, her love for adventure and excitement beckoned her to a new and dangerous world. She would run away from home, steal a car, experiment with acid, get arrested, hang around drug dealers, frequent raves, becoming more and more addicted the power she wielded in her blind quest for freedom. She was just seventeen…

In an attempt to focus her daughter’s energy towards something productive, Olivieri’s mother enlisted her in a model search that brought her to Milan to live. It was at this time that Olivieri learned to truly provide for herself, fully realizing her goal for independence while simultaneously having her first taste of another culture and the wealthy, glamorous life that seemed to lay itself at her feet with her newfound career. This only fueled her desire to explore even more of what the world had to offer.

Balancing the bare minimum to satisfy her college scholarship requirements, Olivieri moved to New York to model. She quickly found herself entangled in the first of many tumultuous relationships to come, with a known and wanted drug dealer. After fleeing the country, Olivieri’s boyfriend returned to the States, despite risk of imprisonment. Their relationship continued under high pressure but came to a crashing halt when they were surrounded by the DEA on the streets of New York and 18-year-old Olivieri was forced to literally walk away from the outlaw she loved without looking back.

“I seemed to pass through the undercover DEA like water as they filtered by me and separated him out. An indelibly surreal moment. Tears streamed down my face but in fear of pushing my luck, I never looked back…”

Olivieri took a trip to Miami with a friend in an effort to move on with her life and found herself yet again romantically entangled, this time with a professional con artist. Her fascination for the criminal mind took a dark turn when he turned his psychopathic behavior towards her. Submersed in a Miami seldom seen, she was held hostage by bodyguards in bedrooms when she refused to behave and fed lies and drugs to lose the scent of reality. Throughout the 8 month relationship, a psychological minefield gave Olivieri the most expertly bedeviled bout with the mentally ill anyone could ever experience. With an aversion to losing, she remained in the relationship on her own undercover operation to beat him at his own game. Researching the truth, understanding his motivations, using his techniques against him. A very dangerous decision but one that garnered strength and invaluable interpretations on behavior. Her suppressed desire for freedom eventually became intolerable and in desperation, she turned to the police to help her escape from his Machiavellian clutches.

“Being with a con-artist is like being trapped in a cyclone. It’s exciting until the vertigo sets in - then good luck finding the exit..”

While modeling opened a door flung wide to lavish lifestyles and decadent getaways to obscure destinations, the bare necessities for survival were far harder to come by. When she was not jet setting around the world to party with princes in Seychelles or Monarchs in Marrakech, Olivieri would crash on friends’ couches, all of her possessions packed away in one small storage unit.

Intuitively, Olivieri knew she needed a change. With an unfinished Pre-Med degree and an overdeveloped sense of people and the world around her, only a few options came to mind. Rejecting a temporary flirtation with the more ‘practical’ career of selling pre-construction condos, Olivieri choose to drive across the country in a technically “stolen” Mercedes instead. Olivieri made a harried trek out west and used a friend’s name to rent an apartment in the city of dreams.

She turned her ability to read people and learned skills of manipulation toward creating characters that reflected both her enigmatic nature and personal experiences of art and impropriety.

However, a dark cloud still hung about her and the ghost of her recent past continued to haunt her. Unclear of her path and without steady ground to support the weight of what seemed like so many past lives, Olivieri began to return to the joys of her childhood, seeking comfort and validation in the things that had once made her happy so long ago. Embracing her love for music, poetry, and even the quirkiness of her youth, Olivieri was able to overcome the walls that had shrouded her true self for so many years and truly seize both the world and herself with an open grasp.

In turn, the world seemed to embrace her back as she landed job after job, claiming role after role at breakneck speed, each one more notable than the last.

In 2009, Olivieri gave life to “Lydia” the tattooed temptress, on the final season of NBC’s “Heroes.” The series put her on the map as a star on the rise, appearing in 16 episodes of the show. Following “Heroes,” Olivieri had a 5 episode run on the fan obsessed Vampire Diaries in which she played a much loved “Andie Star”, a news reporter that became entangled in the grips of a very sexy vampire, Damon Salvatore (Ian Somerhalder).

In addition to currently working on “House of Lies” for Showtime, Olivieri has been cast as “Annie” in Kathrine Hardwicke’s (Red Riding Hood, Twilight) new thriller “PLUSH” playing a rock-n-roll music manager alongside Emily Browning (Sleeping Beauty, Sucker Punch). Dawn has also recently filmed a lead role in the independent feature SUPREMACY, opposite Danny Glover, and Joe Anderson. The feature, based on a true story, follows a recently paroled white supremacist who, after killing a police officer, takes an African-American family hostage.

In her spare time, Olivieri stays true to her core, traveling and exploring the world, and is active in various charities that support green living, as well as charities that encourage peace and social justice in communities around the world. Raw honesty that comes from embracing her true self has become one of Olivieri’s characteristic traits both in life and on camera, and in turn, she is quickly becoming a master at embracing the worlds of the characters she plays.

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