It'll be a holiday in Hawaii for Heather Tom and her family this year — a well-earned and unaccustomed rest for the "Bold and the Beautiful" actress for whom multi-career-tasking is a way of life.

This year, in addition to her ongoing role as Katie Logan on "The Bold and the Beautiful" and her directorial stints on the daytime show, Tom directed her first feature short — "Serenity," about a man (Vince Nappo) confronting the wreck he's made of his life due to opioid addiction.

It's clearly a passion project for the actress. Heather says she was struck by horror stories of the opioid abuse epidemic.

"The scariest thing about it is, it effects everyone. You can't write it off and say 'Oh, that's an inner city problem,' or 'Oh, that's a rural problem' or 'That's for people who aren't educated.' All kinds of people fall into it. People think, 'If you have a college degree, you're not going to end up shooting heroin.' That's just not the truth with these drugs. It's very insidious — soccer moms and accountants, middle class people. It touches everyone, and it's kind of amazing how many people I've shown the film to, who will say the story reminded them of someone — 'my brother, my cousin, my son, my daughter, myself.'"

Has anyone in her life been sucked into addiction? "I had a very dear friend of mine — it wasn't opioid addiction, but he passed away from drug use," she replies. "I saw what it did to his life. He was such a promising person — so much talent."

Preparing to shoot the script by Zach Bandler, Tom says she learned even more about how extreme the opioid epidemic has become, with "entire communities obliterated by it." And she's angry that it has been "so easy to get these drugs. I have a friend who went in for a root canal and they sent her home with 50 Oxy (Oxycontin pain pills). It's so irresponsible. l believe doctors and drug companies are very culpable for this; these drugs should never have been on the market for anything but post-surgical use, and even then in very small amounts, very monitored and regulated. The fact they've been so (freely distributed) is criminal in my opinion. You look at states like Florida where you can go strip mall to strip mall and get your prescriptions filled; it's so easy."

Filming "Serenity" in a Los Angeles warehouse during one of Southern California's blistering heatwaves was uncomfortable, to say the least. "Inside it was just brutally hot," she recalls — which played into the mood of the film. The lead character, "in his head, in his consciousness, it's almost as if he's actually in purgatory. At the same time, there were three huge brush fires going on around the city, and you woke up in the morning and the whole sky was red."

Now that "Serenity" is complete, Heather hopes to partner with an organization or organizations dedicated to fighting drug dependency that can make good use of her film. "I want to get it out there and get as much attention as possible," she says.

Certainly the topic couldn't be much hotter. "Congress just passed this giant healthcare ominbus bill that deals with opioid addiction," she notes. "Our government has to deal with this in a real way."

Right now, though, there is that holiday break coming up for Heather and husband James Achor and their 4-year-old son, Zane — who not only plays her son on "Bold and the Beautiful" but has a role in "Serenity," too. The couple haven't vacationed in years.

Heather's activities go beyond impressive. This actress, director, creator, wife, mother, design company co-owner, super achiever finished first in the celebrity female division of the 30th Annual Nautica Malibu Triathlon last September — an event that raised some $1,226,000 for the Children's Hospital Los Angeles Pediatric Cancer Research Program.

Heather's plans for the New Year also include launching an internet series she has been working on with her sister, actress Nicholle Tom, a clever-sounding whodunnit told from the vantage point of the camera's view.

"It's going to be a challenge to shoot it, but I think it will be a lot of fun," she says. Sounds like a typical Heather Tom project.