Olivia Munn's Real Name: Lisa Olivia Munn

Quick answer: Olivia Munn's real name is Lisa Olivia Munn. She was born on July 3, 1980, in Oklahoma City and uses her middle name professionally. Her earliest screen credits read "Lisa Munn." She became known as host of G4's Attack of the Show!, then acted in The Newsroom, X-Men: Apocalypse, and Your Friends & Neighbors (Britannica; Library of Congress).

Real name and early life

Britannica's quick facts give her name in full as Lisa Olivia Munn. The Library of Congress name authority, filed as "Munn, Olivia, 1980-," cites "Lisa Olivia Munn (born July 3, 1980, Oklahoma City, U.S.)." Britannica says her early film roles in 2004–05, including her first screen role in the horror film Scarecrow Gone Wild (2004), credited her as Lisa Munn.

Britannica says her father is American and her mother is a Vietnamese woman of Chinese descent whose family came to the United States as refugees from the Vietnam War. After her parents divorced, her mother married a U.S. Air Force officer when Munn was two. The family spent most of the next 14 years in Tokyo. Munn has described her stepfather as abusive. She majored in journalism at the University of Oklahoma, with minors in theater and Japanese, and worked as a sideline reporter after interning at Fox Sports Net.

Career highlights

From 2006 Munn hosted the tech series Attack of the Show! on G4. She also had small roles in Date Night and Iron Man 2 (both 2010) and on Chuck. In June 2010 she became a correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Britannica notes the hire drew backlash from some comedians. Munn told Salon, "Jon Stewart hires people that he thinks are funny."

She appeared in all 25 episodes of Aaron Sorkin's HBO drama The Newsroom (2012–14). Her films include Mortdecai (2015), Zoolander 2 (2016), X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) as Psylocke, Office Christmas Party (2016), The Predator (2018), and Ocean's Eight (2018). She voiced Akiko in the animated Hit-Monkey (2021–24). Since 2025 she has starred with Jon Hamm in Apple TV's Your Friends & Neighbors.

Munn married comedian John Mulaney in July 2024. They have a son, Malcolm, born in 2021, and a daughter, Méi, born in 2024. In March 2024 she revealed a breast cancer diagnosis and a double mastectomy. Time named her one of its 2025 Women of the Year for her screening-awareness campaign. She also wrote Suck It, Wonder Woman! (2010).

Name notes for searchers

Lisa is her legal first name, and Olivia, her middle name, is the one she uses. Munn is her family surname. Searchers who find "Lisa Munn" in older cast lists, such as Scarecrow Gone Wild, are looking at the same person.