This biography of Tila Tequila or Nguyen Thi Thien Thanh will shed more light on her life, an American and social media personality. We will provide detailed information about her early life, rise to social media popularity, chequered career and various controversies.
We will also reveal some facts about the celebrity that you may not know before. Before we go into the details, see the next section for a summary of important facts about Tila Tequila.
10 facts about Tila Tequila
- Tila Tequila’s real name is Nguyen Thi Thien Thanh. She was born in Singapore on 24th October 1981. She will be 39 years old on her 2020 birthday.
- Tila Tequila got her nickname because she was allergic to alcohol while growing up. She has other nicknames and monikers like, Tila Nguyen, Miss Tila and Tornado Thien.
- In 2006, Time Magazine recognised her as the ‘Queen’ of Myspace. She popularised people adding friends they do not know personally on social networks.
- Tila Tequila starred in an adult movie in which she won the 2015 AVN Award for Best Celebrity Sex Tape for her role in it.
- She recorded two EPs, Sex (2007) and Welcome to the Dark Side (2010).
- In 2007, Tila Tequila came out as bisexual and later came out as a lesbian in 2008.
- She is a vocal N*zi-sympathiser and is well known for her anti-Semitic statements.
- In 2018, she made a YouTube video to confess that she was neither bisexual nor a lesbian.
- Tila Tequila is not married and she has two daughters namely, Isabella (2014) and Anabelle (2018).
- In March 2012, Tequila checked into rehab after attempting suicide by pill overdose. She completed her treatment in April 2012.
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Tila Tequila real name and nationality
Tila Tequila’s real name is Nguyen Thi Thien Thanh although she goes by many nicknames. Tila Tequila’s present nationality is the USA. However, she was born in Singapore as Nguyen Thi Thien Thanh on 24th October 1981. Her family was originally Vietnamese boat people who were refugees. They fled from Vietnam during the war in 1975. She was the youngest of three children. She has an elder brother and a younger brother.
Tila Tequila spent most of her childhood in Houston, Texas, where her family had relocated to when she was just one year old. They later moved into a gated community in Texas. However, the family moved again when Nguyen was just eight years old.
Nguyen Thi Thien Thanh got the nickname ‘Tila Tequila’ from her friends because she was allergic to alcohol and developed skin reactions if she took it.
In an autobiographical memoir she released, Tila Tequila mentioned that her family was plagued with issues. She also stated that changing environments too often during childhood affected her negatively.
These problems led her to discover poetry as a means to express herself. During this phase of her life, Nguyen ran away for some months to Queens, New York City, at the age of 16. While in Queens, she revealed that she witnessed a drive-by shooting. She also mentioned that she got pregnant the following year but lost the child to a miscarriage.
Tila Tequila returned to Houston, Texas, and graduated from Alief Hastings High School in 2000. At the age of 19, Tequila left Texas for California to pursue a career as a model.
Tila Tequila Biography: Early career (2001 – 2005)
A Playboy scout had met Nguyen, who is popularly known as Tequila, when she was 19. The scout offered her a chance to model nude for the magazine. This offer influenced her decision to move to Southern California, although she also revealed that troubled early years were also part of what informed her decision.
Nguyen, or Tila Tequila as you may know her, was featured as Playboy’s Cyber Girl of the week on 22nd April 2002, making her the first Asian Cyber Girl of the Month. The Cyber Girl collections feature on Playboy’s paid website, the Playboy Cyber Club. She also did some other photoshoots for Playboy.
When she turned 20, Tila Tequila started pursuing her interest in rock music, but she failed to find a band that would let her join them. This led her to create one called Beyond Betty Jean. Nguyen was the singer and songwriter of the band but it eventually broke up. She did not give up on music immediately, instead, she started working on improving her vocal skills, writing and recording songs.
She joined another band called Jealousy and became their lead singer, they released a few songs online before breaking up as well.
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Nguyen appeared as a contestant on Surviving Nugent, a reality TV show where the contestants had to perform stunts and tasks for Ted Nugent, a rock star. Later, she became a popular face on the import racing scene, a subculture of modifying imported Japanese cars. She appeared on the cover of Import Tuner Magazine, at car shows and in the Street Racing Syndicate video game.
After getting kicked off Friendster, a social networking site in 2003, Nguyen joined Myspace. At the time, Friendster and Myspace were the biggest social networking sites. The websites predate such sites as Facebook, Twitter and the rest of extant social media platforms.
As a Time magazine article in 2006 will later confirm, Nguyen or Tila Tequila changed the social networking site scene. Before she joined Myspace, people were only interested in connecting with those they know. But she made it important for people to want as many friends on the site as possible.
The above-referenced article said of her:
“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.”
Nguyen allegedly had over 3.1 million Myspace friends at the time.
Tila Tequila Biography: Career (2006 – 2009)
Music
Nguyen hosted most of Fuse TV’s dance show titled, Pants-Off Dance-Off. The show premiered on 18th April 2006. The same month, will.i.am announced that the Will.I.Am Music Group, a record label under A&M Records, had signed her.
However, when she released her first official single, I Love U, in February 2007, she did so independently, dropping the song on iTunes. She shot a video for the song as well.
In March 2007, The Saturday Team, a record label, released Tila Tequila’s EP titled Sex. Reports came months later that The Saturday Team and a distributor, Icon Music Entertainment Services, were suing Nguyen. They alleged that she had reneged on a contract that had to do with the Sex EP. She claimed via Myspace that the music company had released the EP without her authorisation. In the end, she lost in court and The Saturday Team won the right to make the EP available for sale digitally. Listen to the Sex Ep below.
Nguyen released her second official single titled Stripper Friends in October 2007. She also released a video for it in March 2008, on iTunes. The song did not get enough attention.
By April 2008, she dropped another single titled Paralyze along with a video on iTunes. Then she released an EP titled I Love U Remixes in the same month and made it available for digital music retailers.
Films and TV shows
Amidst her music career, Nguyen made cameo appearances on the 2007 TV show The War At Home and the 2007 film I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.
She began filming her own reality show by May of the same month.
Nguyen’s reality show aired on MTV on 9th October 2007 and was titled A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila. It involved 16 straight men and 16 lesbians competing for Nguyen’s love. The show had a bisexual theme because she was to reveal that she was actually bisexual at the end of the first season.
A Christian conservative group running The Christian Post, an American Evangelical online newspaper, criticised the show and MTV for agreeing to air it. Nguyen also wrote a reply to the criticising journal. She mentioned that she had “made amends with God” and that the publication had no right to bash the gay community.
The show soon became popular and drew additional interest from Asian media as well. It had three seasons and ended in 2008 with Kristy Morgan emerging as the winner of the season finale. However, Morgan declined her “shot at love”.
Book
On 2nd December 2008, Nguyen released an instructional self-help book on hooking up and socialising. The book is titled Hooking Up with Tila Tequila: A Guide to Love, Fame, Happiness, Success, and Being the Life of the Party.
The book was published by Scribner after the publishing house signed a deal with her.
Career (2010 – 2014)
Music
In 2010, Nguyen seemed to have outgrown the nickname Tila Tequila as she picked up a new moniker, Miss Tila. She also created a record label called Little Miss Trendsetter and released a single under it titled I F__ed the DJ. Additionally, she dropped an edited version of the song I Love My DJ as well.
Both editions failed and got lots of negative reviews. She went on to drop an EP titled Welcome to the Darkside. While this EP got positive reviews, it still did not make many sales. Yet, Nguyen decided to go on a tour to promote the Welcome to the Darkside EP.
Things didn’t turn out well for her during the tour. At one of her stops in August 2010 at a music festival themed Gathering of the Juggalos, spectators threw rocks and bottles at her and she had to leave the stage.
