Lisa Olivia Munn (born July 3, 1980) is an American actress and former television host. After an internship at a news station in Tulsa, she moved to Los Angeles where she began her professional career as a television host for the gaming network G4, primarily on the series Attack of the Show! from 2006 until 2010. She appeared as a correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart from 2010 to 2011. She is known for her three-season-long portrayal of Sloan Sabbith in Aaron Sorkin's HBO political drama series The Newsroom (2012–2014).
Munn's other acting roles include a recurring role on the television series Beyond the Break (2006—2009) and supporting roles in comedy films Big Stan (2007) and Date Night (2010), superhero film Iron Man 2 (2010), and Steven Soderbergh's comedy-drama Magic Mike (2012). She starred in the supernatural horror film Deliver Us from Evil (2014), the comedy Mortdecai (2015), and X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) as Psylocke. In 2017, she provided the voice of Koko in The Lego Ninjago Movie, and had appeared in the History Channel series Six (2017). In 2018, she had a leading role in the science fiction film The Predator, the fourth film in the Predator franchise.
Early life
Munn was born on July 3, 1980, in Oklahoma City to Kimberly Schmid and Winston Munn. Her father is of German, Irish, and English ancestry. Her mother, who is a Vietnamese woman of Chinese ancestry, arrived as a refugee in the United States in 1975 following the Vietnam War and settled in Oklahoma, where she met Munn's father. Munn has a younger brother, John, a physicist; an older brother, James, a custom motorcycle shop owner; and two older sisters, Annie and Sara, the latter of whom is a lawyer.
When Munn was two years old, her parents divorced and her mother married a member of the United States Air Force. The family relocated to Utah, where they resided until 1986. Munn's stepfather was then transferred to Yokota Air Base near Tachikawa in Tokyo, Japan, where she spent her formative years. She has said that her stepfather was "verbally abusive" and demeaning. "When [he] would be screaming his head off in the living room, I would hustle everybody into my room and launch into imitations of teachers or do scenes from movies," she recalled. "And that would take their minds off of the hell that was happening down the hall."
When Munn was 16, her mother divorced her stepfather and moved with the children back to Oklahoma City. Munn attended Putnam City North High School for her junior and senior years, then attended the University of Oklahoma, where she earned a B.A. in journalism with a minor in Japanese and dramatic arts.
Career
2004–2009: Career beginnings and acting
Munn worked as an intern at the NBC affiliate in Tulsa before relocating to Los Angeles. In 2004, she interned at Fox Sports Networks and worked as a sideline reporter for college football and women's basketball. She said that she disliked the experience: "I was trying to be something I wasn't, and that made me really uncomfortable on live TV." She soon moved to Los Angeles, where she was cast in a small role in the direct-to-video horror film Scarecrow Gone Wild. She appeared in rock band Zebrahead's music video for their song "Hello Tomorrow" as the love interest of lead singer Justin Mauriello. She also appeared in National Lampoon's Strip Poker, filmed at Hedonism II, a naturist resort in Negril, Jamaica, with Kato Kaelin. The films aired on DirecTV and In Demand pay-per-view.
In late 2005, Munn began her role as teen surfer Mily Acuna over two seasons of the television drama Beyond the Break, which aired during Noggin's teen block, The N. She enjoys surfing and continues to practice the sport. She originally auditioned for the role of Kai Kealoha, but the producers wanted a "local girl". She also appeared in the film The Road to Canyon Lake.