Olivia Wilde

Wilde was born Olivia Jane Cockburn in New York City on March 10, 1984. She grew up in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., while spending summers at Ardmore in Ireland. She attended Georgetown Day School in Washington, D.C., and Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, graduating in 2002. She derived her professional surname from Irish author Oscar Wilde, and began using it in high school to honor the writers in her family, many of whom used pen names. She was accepted to Bard College, but deferred her enrollment three times to pursue acting. She then studied at the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin. For a short time, Wilde's family also had a house in Guilford, Vermont.

Wilde has a sister five years older and a brother nine years younger. Her father, Andrew Cockburn, is a British journalist who was born in the London suburb of Willesden and raised in Ireland. Her mother, Leslie Cockburn (née Redlich), is an American producer on 60 Minutes and a journalist.

Writer Christopher Hitchens was the Cockburn family's tenant in Washington, D.C., and served as Wilde's babysitter. Her grandfather, British novelist Claud Cockburn, and his sons Alexander and Patrick Cockburn were also journalists, and her aunt, Sarah Caudwell, was a writer.