Olivia Munn

Biography:

Olivia Munn (born Lisa Olivia Munn; July 3, 1980) is an Amer­i­can comedic actress, model, tele­vi­sion per­son­al­ity and author. She began her career being cred­ited as Lisa Munn. Since 2006, she has been using the name Olivia Munn per­son­ally and professionally.

Lisa Olivia Munn was born in Okla­homa. She is of Chi­nese descent on her mother’s side (though her mother was raised in Vietnam) and of Ger­man and Irish descent on her father’s. When Munn was two, her mother re-married, this time to a man in the United States Air Force. Although the fam­ily relo­cated many times, Munn was pre­dom­i­nantly raised in Tokyo, Japan, where the mil­i­tary sta­tioned her step­fa­ther. Dur­ing this time, she had appeared in a num­ber of local the­ater pro­duc­tions, and later became a model within the Japan­ese fash­ion industry. Her par­ents divorced and she moved back to Okla­homa, where she attended Put­nam City North High School for her junior and senior years. She also attended the Uni­ver­sity of Okla­homa, major­ing in jour­nal­ism and minor­ing in Japan­ese and dra­matic arts.

Munn moved back to the United States, set­tling in Los Ange­les, Cal­i­for­nia to pur­sue an act­ing career. In 2004, she interned at Fox Sports Net and worked as a side­line reporter­for col­lege foot­ball and women’s bas­ket­ball. She has gone on to say that she dis­liked the expe­ri­ence, explain­ing “I was try­ing to be some­thing I wasn’t, and that made me really uncom­fort­able on live TV.“Lisa Olivia Munn was born in Okla­homa. She is of Chi­nese descent on her mother’s side (though her mother was raised in Vietnam) and of Ger­man and Irish descent on her father’s. When Munn was two, her mother re-married, this time to a man in the United States Air Force. Although the fam­ily relo­cated many times, Munn was pre­dom­i­nantly raised in Tokyo, Japan, where the mil­i­tary sta­tioned her step­fa­ther. Dur­ing this time, she had appeared in a num­ber of local the­ater pro­duc­tions, and later became a model within the Japan­ese fash­ion industry. Her par­ents divorced and she moved back to Okla­homa, where she attended Put­nam City North High School for her junior and senior years. She also attended the Uni­ver­sity of Okla­homa, major­ing in jour­nal­ism and minor­ing in Japan­ese and dra­matic arts.

Soon after her move to Los Ange­les, Munn was cast in a small role in the straight to video hor­ror film Scare­crow Gone Wild. She appeared in rock band Zebrahead’s video for their song “Hello Tomor­row” as the love inter­est of the lead singer Justin Mauriello.

In late 2005, Munn began her por­trayal of Mily Acuna, a teen surfer, over two sea­sons of the TV drama Beyond the Break on The N net­work. She enjoys surf­ing and con­tin­ues to prac­tice the sport. She orig­i­nally audi­tioned for the part of Kai, but the pro­duc­ers wanted a “local girl.” She also appeared in the film The Road to Canyon Lake.

In 2006, Munn moved on to the G4 net­work, where she began co-hosting Attack of the Show! with Kevin Pereira on April 10. She replaced depart­ing host Sarah Lane. The net­work, devoted to the world of video games and the video game lifestyle, was at first hes­i­tant to hire Munn. Although she admits video games were her “weak point,” she was con­fi­dent in her tech­ni­cal knowledge. On the show, Munn was fea­tured with jour­nal­ist Anna David in a seg­ment called “In Your Pants,” which deals with sex and rela­tion­ship ques­tions from view­ers. While work­ing on Attack of the Show!, Munn hosted For­mula D, a now defunct pro­gram about Amer­i­can drift rac­ing, and an online pod­cast called Around the Net (for­merly known as The Daily Nut), for G4. Munn left Attack of the Show! in Decem­ber 2010 and was replaced by Can­dace Bailey.

Munn made her film debut in the Rob Schnei­der movie Big Stan. She played Schneider’s character’s recep­tion­ist Maria. Munn also had a sig­nif­i­cant role in the 2008 hor­ror film Insan­i­tar­ium, in which she played a nurse at an insane asy­lum. She had roles in the 2010 movies Date Night and Iron Man 2. Robert Downey, Jr. praised Munn for her impro­vi­sa­tion skills and led the crew in a round of applause.

Munn hosted Microsoft’s Bing-a-thon, an adver­tise­ment on Hulu for the Microsoft search-engine Bing on June 8, 2009, along­side Jason Sudeikis.

Munn appeared in ABC Family’s Greek, por­tray­ing Cappie’s love inter­est, Lana.

In May 2010, NBC announced that Munn would star in the upcom­ing tele­vi­sion series Per­fect Cou­ples. The half-hour roman­tic com­edy pre­miered at on Jan­u­ary 20, 2011.

On June 3, 2010, Munn pre­miered in her new role as a cor­re­spon­dent on Com­edy Central’s The Daily Show. Her hir­ing prompted crit­i­cism from Irin Car­mon of Jezebel, who ques­tioned Munn’s cre­den­tials and accused the show’s pro­duc­tion of sex­ism in hir­ing Munn, whom Car­mon char­ac­ter­ized as a sex symbol. Carmon saw Munn’s hir­ing as a per­pet­u­a­tion of the show pro­duc­tion office’s his­tory as a male-dominated atmos­phere mar­gin­al­iz­ing and alien­at­ing to women. A group of 32 female Daily Show pro­duc­tion staff mem­bers con­demned Carmon’s piece as inac­cu­rate and mis­in­formed, as did Munn her­self in an inter­view, in which she stated that Carmon’s asser­tion was an insult both to her and to the rest of the Daily Show staff.

In July 2010 it was announced that Munn would guest-star in NBC’s Chuck as a CIA agent.

Munn has booked mod­el­ing cam­paigns for Nike, Pepsi and Neu­tro­gena. She appeared on the Fall 2006 cover of Foam mag­a­zine in Sep­tem­ber, in Men’s Edge mag­a­zine in August, and was fea­tured in a pic­to­r­ial in Com­plex in Novem­ber 2006, where she later became a columnist. In Feb­ru­ary 2007, she appeared as “Babe of the Month” in a non-nude pic­to­r­ial in Play­boy magazine. Munn also appeared in the July/August 2007 issue of Men’s Health. In Sep­tem­ber 2007, she was fea­tured in the Ital­ian Van­ity Fair for their “Hot Young Hol­ly­wood” Issue. Munn appeared in the Winter/Spring 2009 issue of Men’s Health Liv­ing. She was fea­tured as the cover girl for the July/August 2009 issue of Play­boy, and later on the cover of the Jan­u­ary 2010 and Feb­ru­ary 2011 U.S. Maxim magazine.

Munn’s book, Suck It, Won­der Woman: The Mis­ad­ven­tures of a Hol­ly­wood Geek (ISBN 0–312-59105–5), was released on July 6, 2010. She is work­ing on her own mag­a­zine, Hey Olivia, sched­uled to be pub­lished by MYMAG. It will include a 20-page spread of Munn and a fan-picked poster.

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