Olivia Munn Has Full Hysterectomy to Fight Cancer

As part of her breast cancer battle, Olivia Munn and her doctors intentionally put her body into menopause, the actor reveals in a new interview with Vogue. Because the type of breast cancer she was diagnosed with last year grows by feeding on estrogen, Munn (who underwent a double mastectomy) needed to suppress the hormone—but thanks to side effects of the drug her medical team initially put her on to do just that, she was almost unable to get out of bed. Munn, who shares one child with partner John Mulaney, says it was heartbreaking to watch her toddler son point to her bed when someone asked where his mom worked.

And so, she reveals, "I have now had an oophorectomy and hysterectomy. I took out my uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries." Though she will never carry another child, she says it was the clear choice to make so that she could be "present for my family" rather than, essentially, bedridden. "I had friends try to cheer me up by saying, 'Malcolm's not going to remember this. Don't worry,'" she says. "But I just kept thinking to myself, 'I'm going to remember this, that I missed all these things.' It's his childhood, but it's my motherhood, and I don't want to miss any of these parts if I don't have to." Read Munn's full interview, in which she talks about the egg retrieval process she went through before having the procedure, at Vogue. (More Olivia Munn stories.)