Isla Lang Fisher (born February 3, 1976) is an Australian actress and author. She began acting on Australian Television, and is best known for her role of Shannon Reed on the Australian soap opera Home and Away and for her role in the 2005 comedy Wedding Crashers.

Isla was born in Muscat, Oman, to Scottish parents, a father who worked for the United Nations and a romance novelist mother. Isla moved with her family to Perth, Western Australia, when she was nine months old.

Her name, after the Scottish island of Islay, is pronounced eye-luh; she has two brothers. Isla has said that she had a “great” upbringing in Perth with a “very outdoorsy life”. She began appearing in commercials on Australian television at the age of nine, before going on to win roles in popular children’s television shows Bay City and Paradise Beach. She attended Methodist Ladies’ College and appeared in lead roles in school productions.

At the age of 18, with the help of her mother, she wrote two teen novels, Bewitched and Seduced by Fame, that became bestsellers. From 1994 to 1997 she played the role of Shannon Reed on the hit Australian soap opera Home and Away.

After leaving the popular soap to pursue new challenges, Fisher enrolled at a prestigious theatre and arts training school in Paris, and went on to appear in pantomime in the United Kingdom.

She also toured with Darren Day in the Summer Holiday musical, and appeared in a London theatre production called Così. Fisher’s ambition was always to progress onto the big screen however, and in 2002 she had a part in the film version of Scooby-Doo as Mary-Jane, Shaggy Rogers’s love interest, and subsequently was taken on by an American agent.

A larger role in Wedding Crashers, alongside Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, in 2005 won her the Breakthrough Performance Award at the MTV Movie Awards.

While promoting Wedding Crashers, she was officially crowned the 1000th guest on Australian talk show Rove on August 2, 2005. She entered the set ahead of Owen Wilson, winning the title by two meters.

In 2006, Isla starred as Becca, a Manhattan party host in the offbeat relationship drama London co-starring Jessica Biel, Chris Evans and Jason Statham. In 2007 she appeared in The Lookout, a thriller co-starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Matthew Goode, and Hot Rod, opposite Andy Samberg.

She will next appear in Wedding Daze, co-starring Jason Biggs, Definitely, Maybe, with Rachel Weisz and Abigail Breslin, and will have a voice role in Horton Hears a Who!

Fisher has also co-written a treatment for a script entitled Groupies with Amy Poehler, as well as another project entitled The Cookie Queen. She was scheduled to appear in The Simpsons Movie, although her appearance was cut from the final version.

Isla signed up to act in the movie adaption of the book Confessions of a Shopaholic, the filming of which will start in January 2008. Isla has spoken out against the lack of opportunities for female comedians in Hollywood.

Isla resides in Los Angeles, California, as well as in London, with her fiancé, English comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. She reportedly has converted to Judaism in advance of her marriage to Cohen, who is Jewish. As of March 2007, the two have not yet set a date for their wedding.

Isla has said that her “sensibility is Australian” and that she has a “laid-back attitude to life” that she feels is “very Australian”. Her mother and siblings live and work in Athens, Greece, while her father lives in Frankfurt, Germany. On 19 October 2007, Isla gave birth to her first child, a daughter they named Olive in Los Angles.