Munn said she was given the diagnosis last April, two months after negative results on a test that checked for 90 cancer genes.The actress Olivia Munn said on Wednesday that she had been given a diagnosis of an aggressive form of breast cancer last year and soon after had a double mastectomy as part of her treatment.Munn, 43, who has starred in dozens of movies and television shows, including the HBO series “The Newsroom,” wrote in a lengthy social media post that she had tried to be proactive about her health.In February 2023, not long after having a normal mammogram, Munn took a robust genetic test that checked for 90 cancer genes. She said she tested negative for all of them, including BRCA, the most well-known breast cancer gene. Her sister also tested negative around the same time.“We called each other and high-fived over the phone,” Munn wrote.Two months later, Munn learned she had luminal B, a type of breast cancer. A month after that, she had the double mastectomy.“In the past ten months, I have had four surgeries, so many days spent in bed I can’t even count and have learned more about cancer, cancer, treatment and hormones than I ever could have imagined,” she wrote. “Surprisingly, I’ve only cried twice. I guess I haven’t felt like there was time to cry.”Munn’s post was in large part a plea to women to ask their doctors to calculate their breast cancer risk assessment score. That her obstetrician-gynecologist had done so helped identify Munn’s cancer early.“The fact that she did saved my life,” Munn wrote.The risk assessment includes factors like familial breast cancer history and age; Munn mentioned in her post that having her first child over the age of 30 was a factor. Munn has been in a relationship with the comic John Mulaney since 2021 and they have a 2-year-old son, Malcolm, together.The results of Munn’s risk assessment prompted her doctor to send her for an M.R.I., which led to an ultrasound. That led to a biopsy revealing the cancer.In her post, Munn thanked her doctors as well as her friends and family. She thanked Mulaney for researching all of her operations and medications for information about side effects and recovery.For the past year, Munn’s social media has shown many happy moments, as well as many glamorous ones, including family photos at the beach and others of Munn in designer looks. This weekend she shared images that showed her wearing a metallic Fendi gown for the Oscars ceremony, where Mulaney presented an award.“I’ve tended to let people see me when I have energy, when I can get dressed and get out of the house, when I can take my baby boy to the park,” she wrote.“I’ve kept the diagnosis and the worry and the recovery and the pain medicine and the paper gowns private. I needed to catch my breath and get through some of the hardest parts before sharing.”

The directors Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee discuss their journey in making the documentary “Aftershock,” which shines a light on a national health crisis.“Black lives matter because Black wombs matter!” Shawnee Benton Gibson chanted from the stage during a National Action Network rally in Washington, D.C., in 2020.In October 2019, her daughter Shamony Gibson died just two weeks after giving birth. Her death, at age 30, was another grim emblem of a national crisis: the epidemic of Black maternal mortality. The United States is the most dangerous industrialized country to give birth, with Black women dying at three times the rate of white women.Not long after Shamony’s death, her mother, along with her partner, Omari Maynard, held a celebration of her life that they called “Aftershock.” Ahead of it, Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee, the directors of a documentary that shares a title with that event, reached out to them.“We didn’t know them, but they were open for us to come and film,” Lee said in an interview this month along with Eiselt. “That really started and jelled the film as it is now.”Shortly after, the directors met Bruce McIntyre, who held a news conference to sound the alarm about maternal mortality and demand accountability for the death of his partner, Amber Rose Isaac, 26, who died postpartum in April 2020.Shamony and Amber anchor “Aftershock,” which not only examines America’s abysmal maternal mortality rates among Black and brown women but also follows the women’s loved ones as they grapple with fresh grief and fight for a solution. Pulling together numerous threads, the directors delve into the U.S. medical system — illuminating disparities in Black and brown communities and the gross neglect that befalls them as a result of centuries-long systemic racism.Omari Maynard and Shamony Gibson in “Aftershock.” Gibson died two weeks after giving birth to their child.Onyx Collective“History is everything,” said Eiselt, who directed the 2018 documentary “93Queen,” about a female emergency-responder unit in Brooklyn. “Aftershock” is the directorial debut of Lee, who has produced films like “Monster” and the Netflix series “She’s Gotta Have It” (from her husband, Spike Lee).“It was really important to us to show how we got here,” Eiselt said, “that this crisis didn’t just pop up out of nowhere. It’s on a historical continuum that started from 1619, where Black women were devalued and dehumanized. And here we are.”The film, streaming on Hulu, presents a litany of jarring facts — for one, the explosion of cesarean births since the 1970s. The procedure, which is often more profitable for hospitals, results in significantly more maternal deaths than vaginal deliveries.Despite the grim subject matter, the film does not wallow in tragedy. Instead, it’s underpinned by optimism and hope: in the families’ fights for change and in efforts on Capitol Hill, particularly the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act of 2021, which would be the greatest investment in maternal health in U.S. history.Here’s what Eiselt and Lee, who had never worked together before, learned about filmmaking, and themselves, with this project.Expect the unexpected.It doesn’t take long to realize that the documentary was captured at the height of Covid, with mask-wearing throughout and plenty of outdoor scenes. At one point, Omari, a teacher, talks to a student via a laptop while caring for his new baby.“Oh my God, how are we going to do this?” Lee remembered telling Eiselt at the beginning of the pandemic. “We did have to adjust,” Lee said, and be “nimble and flexible.” They found ways to pivot, including giving iPhones to Omari, Shawnee and Bruce to film themselves at home and “keep themselves going.”Plans to film in hospitals in New York and in Tulsa, Okla., were also complicated. (Oklahoma’s maternal mortality rate is double that of the nation, with Black women making up a disproportionate amount of those deaths.)“Maybe things worked out in the end,” Lee said. “We were more out in the streets and had very small shoots.”Follow the stories, wherever they lead.Early in the film, Bruce and Omari form a profound bond. The pair go on to gather with other Black men whose partners died in a similar way, finding comfort and commiseration in each other.“People are often struck by the fact that we followed fathers in this film,” Lee said. “Being able to see these men who are raising their children — who clearly love their partners very much, who are driven by a love for their partners, for their community, for their families — it’s just been really special to us as well, something we were not expecting when we first got down to make this film.”Black maternal mortality is not just a women’s issue, Lee said: “It’s a family issue. It’s a community issue. It’s everybody’s issue.”Omari with his son. “People are often struck by the fact that we followed fathers in this film,” said Tonya Lewis Lee, who directed the documentary with Paula Eiselt.Onyx CollectiveNew viewpoints beget growth.Before Lee and Eiselt met at a conference in 2019 — “I was pregnant, I probably looked crazy,” Eiselt joked — they were strangers. But their shared vision, along with their passion and urgency, spurred them to team up.“You need that passion to just jump in with someone, you know? We just were like, ‘we’re going to do this,’” Eiselt said. “We spent so much time talking — like, really talking. I would speak to Tonya more than anyone else in my life.”“We were real and deep from the beginning,” Lee said.As for any challenging moments between them, there were times, Eiselt said, where Lee would push back: “She would say like, ‘You don’t have that perspective.’ She’s a Black woman. I am not.”These conversations pushed Eiselt to “think very deeply about everything that we were doing,” she said, particularly because they were filming during the George Floyd uprisings. “We went through so many huge world events,” Eiselt said. “We grew so much because of the circumstances of the world.”“We would go at it, but in the spirit of, how are we going to make it better?” Lee added. “It was always about, how do we elevate the story?”Balance emotions and professionalism.The intimate nature of the documentary, bringing viewers into the fresh pain of the families, is gutting to watch. For the filmmakers, maintaining the appropriate amount of distance was tough at times.Eiselt, for instance, was pregnant for part of the project and then postpartum. At one point, she was interviewing Omari while nine months along. “In order to compartmentalize it, I had to really almost numb myself in a way which isn’t necessarily the best thing,” she said. “But I felt like, at points, if I started to go there, I wouldn’t come back.”This balance is not uncommon for documentary filmmakers, she said. “I feel like in film school, you should take psychology.”But watching Shawnee, Omari and Bruce “turning their pain into power,” Eiselt said, fueled the directors.“I can’t be in tears on the floor,” Lee said, “if Shawnee is out there charging forward.”

His ex-wife, Demi Moore, announced on Instagram that the actor has recently received the news.On Wednesday, Demi Moore announced on Instagram that her ex-husband Bruce Willis, the prolific action-movie star, had recently been diagnosed with aphasia — a disorder that affects the brain’s language center, and a person’s ability to understand or express speech — and that he would be stepping away from acting.“To Bruce’s amazing supporters, as a family we wanted to share that our beloved Bruce has been experiencing some health issues and has recently been diagnosed with aphasia, which is impacting his cognitive abilities,” Moore’s post reads. “As a result of this and with much consideration Bruce is stepping away from the career that has meant so much to him.”“We are moving through this as a strong family unit, and wanted to bring his fans in because we know how much he means to you, as you do to him,” it continued. “As Bruce always says, ‘Live it up,’ and together we plan to do just that.”The post is signed “Emma, Demi, Rumer, Scout, Tallulah, Mabel & Evelyn” — referring to Emma Heming Willis, Willis’s wife; and his children. Moore is the mother of Rumer, Scout and Tallulah; and Heming Willis is mother to Mabel and Evelyn.The post was accompanied with a comical photo of a younger, smirking Willis wearing a bathrobe, sunglasses, a gold chain with a cross and a towel around his head.Representatives for Willis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Willis, who turned 67 this month, is most famous for his role as the rough-around-the-edges, yet clever, New York City cop John McClane in the highly successful “Die Hard” movie series, made up of five films from 1988 to 2013.He has also starred in critically acclaimed films like “Pulp Fiction” (1994) and “Moonrise Kingdom” (2012).While thought of primarily as a movie star, he has received more accolades for his work on television: For his role as the private detective David Addison (played opposite Cybill Shepherd) in “Moonlighting” — an ABC comedy-drama-romance that ran from 1985 to 1989 — he earned three Golden Globe nominations, winning one; and two lead actor Emmy nominations, winning one. He also won a guest actor in a comedy Emmy in 2000 for his role as Paul Stevens, the father of Ross Geller’s much-younger girlfriend, on the NBC series “Friends.”Since 2015, his filmography has mostly been an onslaught of B-movie action productions, including “Breach,” in 2020, and “Fortress,” in 2021. According to his IMDb page, Willis currently has nearly 10 movies in post-production.

VAGINA OBSCURAAn Anatomical VoyageBy Rachel E. GrossYour vagina is a mystery, an enigma, a world that has been largely uncharted, underestimated and misunderstood since the start of humankind. It holds more secrets than the Sphinx and can seem more distant than Mars, more unfamiliar than the ocean floor. Because, until recent decades — when people with vaginas have made painstaking headway into the realms of science and health — the pursuit of such knowledge has been left to men. To put it lightly, they blew it.As Rachel E. Gross proves in “Vagina Obscura,” the impact of this neglect cannot be overstated. Taking readers on an expansive journey across continents, cultures, centuries and even species, Gross reveals a stunning disparity in Western medicine and academia: While huge amounts of money and dedication are poured into the understanding of penises, the female body is disregarded. Like lore, this misinformation and shame are still being passed down to girls today.Gross experienced this “knowledge gap” firsthand at 29, when she was prescribed what was “basically rat poison” to treat a bacterial infection in her vagina. It was then that she realized “I knew almost nothing about how my vagina worked” — and that no one else really does either.She cites Darwin’s journal entry declaring that a woman’s purpose was to be “a nice soft wife,” “an object to be beloved and played with. Better than a dog anyhow.” Freud, who admitted he knew little about womankind (that “little creature without a penis”), would influence gynecology through the 20th century, and even today.Not until 1993 did a federal mandate require that “women and minorities” be included in clinical trials. Only in 2014 did the National Institutes of Health start a branch to study vulvas, vaginas, ovaries and uteruses. And in 2009, the bioengineer Linda Griffith opened America’s first and only lab (at M.I.T.) to research endometriosis. “My niece who’s 16 was just diagnosed,” Griffith says in the book. “And there’s no better treatment for her — 30 years younger than me — than there was for me when I was 16.”In the 1980s, medical textbooks called endometriosis “the career woman’s disease” — language that had been recirculated for generations. A century earlier, coinciding with first-wave feminism in Europe, doctors — buttressed by Freud’s 1895 “Studies on Hysteria” — suggested that higher education and careers “might siphon blood from their uteruses to their brains.” In the 1870s, higher education was thought to “shrivel a woman’s ovaries and keep her from her motherly duties.”Of course, the word “hysteria” — derived from the Greek hystera, or womb — has been used to degrade women for centuries, as one of the first mental health conditions attributed only to them. Gross adds to this history the recent argument that hysteria was endometriosis all along. If true, “this would constitute one of the most colossal mass misdiagnoses in human history,” according to a 2012 paper by Iranian endometriosis surgeons, one that “has subjected women to murder, madhouses and lives of unremitting physical, social and psychological pain.”Gross takes on a herculean task, exploring female anatomy from a medical, social and historical perspective, in eight chapters ranging in topic from the glans clitoris to the egg cell to the vaginal microbiome. Some passages skew medically dense and might be wince-inducing for the squeamish. But Gross manages to make palatable the sawing of cadavers and the injecting of silicone into two-pronged snake vaginas, without undercutting the gravity of their resulting revelations.She achieves this by way of personal stories, like those of Miriam Menkin, the first researcher to fertilize a human egg outside the body; the OB-GYN Ghada Hatem, who performs clitoral restoration surgery on women who have endured genital cutting; Aminata Soumare, a young Frenchwoman whose clitoris was excised when she was a baby in Mali; and the gynecologist Marci Bowers, who has elevated gender-affirming surgery to an art form, prioritizing the construction of a functioning, sensitive clitoris.And it is no wonder that the clitoris has been “demonized, dismissed and left to the trash heap of history.”An organ that exists almost entirely beneath the body’s surface, it was termed “membre honteux,” or “the shameful member,” by a French anatomist in 1545. Because, extraordinarily, it is the only human organ whose primary function is pleasure.VAGINA OBSCURAAn Anatomical VoyageBy Rachel E. GrossIllustrated. 307 pp. W.W. Norton & Company. $30.