Olivia Munn announced Wednesday, March 13, that she was diagnosed with breast cancer in April 2023 and underwent a double mastectomy.
The actress, 43, explained that she and her sister Sara Potts tested negative for the BRCA gene — the most well-known gene to cause cancer — and her mammogram came back clear, but her doctor decided to calculate her Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Score just in case.
“The fact that she did save my life,” Munn wrote in a lengthy statement shared on Instagram, noting that her lifetime risk was 37 percent.
Her doctor prompted the actress to go for an MRI, then an ultrasound and finally a biopsy that confirmed she had luminal B cancer in both breasts, which is an “aggressive, fast-moving cancer.”
Munn underwent a double mastectomy 30 days later and has gone through four surgeries total over the past 10 months.
“I went from feeling completely fine one day to waking up in a hospital bed after a 10-hour surgery the next,” she wrote. “I’m lucky. We caught it with enough time that I had options.”
The “X-Men: Apocalypse” star credited her family, friends and partner, John Mulaney, for their support throughout her cancer journey.
“I’m so thankful to John for the nights he spent researching what every operation and medication meant and what side effects and recovery I could expect,” she continued.
“For being there before I went into each surgery and being there when I woke up, always placing framed photos of our little boy Malcolm so it would be the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes.”
Munn concluded her message by thanking her physicians, the staff at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif., calling her OBGYN, Dr. Thaïs Aliabadi, her “guardian angel.”
