Tila Tequila

Nguyễn Thị Thiên Thanh (born October 24, 1981), better known by her stage name Tila TeQuila, is an American television and social media personality.

She has also used the names Tila Nguyen, Miss Tila and Tornado Thien.

She first gained recognition for her active presence on social networking websites.

After becoming the most popular person on Myspace, TeQuila was offered the opportunity to star in her own reality television series.

Nguyen graduated from Alief Hastings High School in 2000.

Born in Singapore and raised in Houston, Texas, TeQuila moved to Los Angeles in 2001 to pursue her modeling career.

She has cited her violent adolescence in Texas as her reason for becoming a model and moving to California in 2001.

She did a test shoot, then eventually moved to Southern California and was featured as Playboy's Cybergirl of the Week on April 22, 2002, and soon thereafter she became the first Asian Cyber Girl of the Month.

A few more pictorials for the magazine followed.

At age 20, Nguyen acted on her interest in rock music and started looking for bands willing to let her join.

She eventually assembled a band called Beyond Betty Jean, for which she was singer and songwriter.

Beyond Betty Jean eventually broke up and Nguyen started working in recording studios to sharpen her vocal skills and wrote music.

Later, she became the lead singer of a band called Jealousy, which released a few songs online before breaking up.

After being featured in numerous men's magazines (including Playboy, Stuff and Maxim), she made her reality television debut on the VH1 show Surviving Nugent (2003).

Besides her career in modeling and television, TeQuila also pursued her career as a recording artist.

She was the lead singer of the bands Beyond Betty Jean and Jealousy, before launching a solo career.

In a March 2003 interview, she revealed that she has taken some college classes but does not have a degree, stating, "I didn't want to go to college for an actual degree because there's nothing out there I like besides doing something that involves the entertainment industry."

Nguyen's career began at the age of 19 when she was discovered at the Sharpstown Mall by a Playboy scout and was offered a chance to model nude for the magazine.

In 2003, Nguyen was a contestant on VH1's Surviving Nugent, a reality TV show where participants performed compromising tasks and stunts for rock star Ted Nugent.

Nguyen gained further popularity through the import racing scene.

She has been featured on the cover of Import Tuner magazine, at car shows such as Hot Import Nights, and in the video game Street Racing Syndicate.

Nguyen joined Myspace in the fall of 2003 after getting booted off of Friendster multiple times.

Time magazine, in a 2006 profile of Nguyen noted her impact on the platform stating "Pre-Tila, your MySpace friends were mostly people you actually knew. Post-Tila, the biggest game on the site became Who Has the Most Friends, period, whoever they might be," also calling her, the "Queen" of the site.

Her bisexuality-themed dating show, A Shot at Love with Tila TeQuila (2007), aired for two seasons and became MTV's second-highest-rated series premiere of that year.

Her debut single "I Love U" was released in 2007 to mixed reviews.

Despite having strong online sales, the song failed to enter any charts.

TeQuila followed with several independently released singles, including "Stripper Friends" and "Paralyze".

Her book, Hooking Up With Tila TeQuila: A Guide to Love, Fame, Happiness, Success, and Being the Life of the Party, was published in 2008.

After expressing her support of Adolf Hitler, and making antisemitic and white nationalist comments, she was expelled from Celebrity Big Brother.

Nguyen was born in Singapore, where her family were Vietnamese boat people, who arrived from Vietnam after the Vietnam War.

Nguyen has an older brother, Daniel, and older sister, Terri.

When she was one year old, the family relocated to a neighborhood in Houston, Texas and were eventually admitted to a gated community run by a strict Buddhist temple.

The family left the community when Nguyen was eight.

Nguyen was nicknamed "Tila TeQuila" by friends due to her apparent allergy to alcohol.

In her memoir, she would later explain that she felt "confused" and "lost" by various personal family and environmental issues.

She turned to writing poetry in an attempt to release powerful emotions.

At age 16, Nguyen ran away to Queens, New York City, for several months.

While still 16, she experienced a drive-by shooting in Houston.

She reports having become pregnant and suffering a miscarriage the following year.

In 2010, she released her second EP, Welcome to the Dark Side.