Dawn Olivieri (born February 8, 1981 in St. Petersburg, Florida) is an American model and actress. She is currently known for her role of Monica Talbot on the Showtime original series House of Lies. She also appeared as a one-time Briefcase Model on the NBC TV game show Deal or No Deal.
Olivieri's first experiences with acting came during preschool games when she would frequently pick a dog as her preferred character of choice. While she would blossom into quite the babe later on, Dawn's popularity went to the dogs early on. Because she was a late bloomer with a short haircut, she earned the unflattering nickname "Dan" in middle school, which stayed with her all the way into high school. During this time, she joined the school band as a bassoon player, but remained friendless when it came to lunch hours in the school cafeteria.
But despite Dawn's interesting choices in homemade fashion (she would choose the styles and her mother would sew them) and her lack of friends, a rebellious Dawn still found ways to get into trouble at home as her parents sealed her bedroom windows so she wouldn't climb out, but she found ways to continually get what she wanted, and even ran away from home. She fondly recalled this phase as a time when she was "that daughter every parent is so terrified to have." By high school's end, Dawn was a full-blown babe and was chosen by a modeling agency to journey to Milan. Just 17, she went there with no chaperon and enjoyed a series of work overseas, only to be stiffed by her modeling company, who backed out on paying her. Disenchanted, Dawn returned home and started taking biology at the University of South Florida, but kept her eye on the entertainment world.
Olivieri was soon on the rise in the television field as she began auditioning for and landing guest starring roles in TV and roles in movies. She landed guest starring roles on shows such as The Player, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, and How I Met your Mother.
Dawn also landed a gig as one of the 26 Briefcase Models on the new NBC TV game show Deal or No Deal during its Premiere Week only (aired the week of December 19-23, 2005) as she stood beside Briefcase Model #14 and had moved on the other TV and movie projects by the time Deal returned to the airwaves in February 2006.
She appeared in the October 2009 issue of Maxim and played the lead role in the SyFy film HYDRA, provided the voice of Pepper Potts on the Disney XD series Avengers, and lend her voice to the character Lucy Kuo in the video game inFamous 2.
Dawn played the role of Janice Herveaux in the third season of the HBO series True Blood. She was also seen during the 4th season of Heroes as the tattooed temptress Lydia, to her current role of Monica Talbot on the Showtime original series House of Lies, a role she's been playing since it's debut in 2012.
Cases[]
- Case 14 - Season 1 (Premiere Week)