When Munn was two years old, her parents divorced and her mother remarried to a member of the United States Air Force. The family relocated to Utah, where they resided until 1986, when Munn's stepfather was transferred to the Yokota Air Base near Tachikawa in Tokyo, Japan, where she ultimately spent her formative years. Munn has said that her stepfather was "verbally abusive" and demeaning. "When 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."