Tila Tequila

Biography

Nguyễn Thị Thiên Thanh (born October 24, 1981), better known by her stage name Tila Tequila, is an American model, singer, and reality TV actress. She has also used the names Tila Nguyen, Miss Tila and Tornado Thien. Born in Singapore and raised in Houston, Texas, Tequila moved to Los Angeles in 2001 to pursue her modeling career. She first gained recognition for her active presence on social networking websites. After being featured as a model in numerous men's magazines (including Playboy, Stuff and Maxim), she made her reality television debut on the VH1 show Surviving Nugent (2003). After becoming the most popular person on Myspace, Tequila was offered the opportunity to star in her own reality television series. 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. In addition to 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. 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". In 2010, she released her second EP, Welcome to the Dark Side. 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. She has long used social media and personal blogs to post her comments and has made posts that are described as antisemitic and homophobic. In a 2013 blog post, she expressed her support and admiration of Adolf Hitler. When these comments came to light in 2015, they led to her removal from Celebrity Big Brother; she blamed depression and drug use for the comments. She has also made associations with Neo-Nazism and the alt-right.

== Early life == 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 an older sister, Terri. When she was one year old, the family relocated to a neighborhood in Houston, Texas and was eventually admitted to a gated community run by a strict Buddhist temple. The family left the community when Nguyen was eight. She says she became rebellious and used the drug ecstasy at 11, and says "I used to rob houses, steal cars and stuff. And it just got worse in high school.” This led to her being sent to a reform school for six months. 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. Nguyen graduated from Alief Hastings High School in 2000. She has cited her violent adolescence in Texas as her reason for becoming a model and moving to California in 2001. 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."

== Career ==

=== 2001–2005: Modeling career, Beyond Betty Jean and Myspace ===

Nguyen's modelling career began when she posed for a friend's calendar. Then, at the age of 19, she was discovered at the Sharpstown Mall by a Playboy scout and was offered a chance to model nude for the magazine. 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. 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. She says that "At that time no one was on there at all. I felt like a loser while all the cool kids were at some other school. So I mass e-mailed between 30,000 and 50,000 people and told them to come over. Everybody joined overnight." She eventually amassed 1.5 million followers on the site and turned it into a business venture selling merchandise. At her maximum, she had 1,771,920 MySpace friends.

=== 2006–2009: Solo career, and A Shot at Love ===

During the first season of Fuse TV's dance show, Pants-Off Dance-Off, on which a group of contestants strip to music videos, Nguyen was the most frequent host. In April 2006, during the taping of an interview with MTV's Total Request Live VJs, will.i.am announced that Nguyen had been signed to the Will.I.Am music group, a record label under A&M Records. Despite this major-label signing, Nguyen independently released her first single "I Love U" through iTunes on February 27, 2007, justifying the independent release through her desire to become famous by herself. She also shot a music video for the song. In March 2007, Washington-based record label The Saturday Team released an EP called Sex, by Tila Tequila. On July 27, 2007, Italian website MusicBlob reported that The Saturday Team and distributor Icon Music Entertainment Services sued Nguyen over breaching her contract related to the album. However, Nguyen claimed in a MySpace bulletin that the EP was not authorized for release by her, and was removed from most retailers. The Saturday Team won a legal case, making Sex available for digital purchase. Nguyen made an appearance as one of the 12 strangers in the first game on April 6, 2007, episode of NBC's game show Identity. On March 4, 2007, she made a cameo appearance on the show The War At Home. She also appeared as a Hooters Girl in the 2007 film I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.

In May 2007, Nguyen began filming for a reality show which first aired on MTV on October 9, 2007, as A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila. The program was a bisexual-themed dating show where 16 straight men and 16 lesbian women competed for Nguyen's affections, the twist being that the contestants were not aware of her bisexuality until the end of the first episode. The ten-episode series was produced by SallyAnn Salsano and MTV. The show led to a heated online debate between Nguyen and conservative Christians after an article appeared on The Christian Post on September 13, 2007. After seeing the article, Nguyen wrote an impassioned response in her blog on September 28, 2007, criticizing churches for "bashing" the gay community while thanking God for saving her life. The show premiered for a second season in April 2008 and became a popular gossip subject in Asian media, such as AsianWeek. The season finale premiered July 8, 2008, the winner being Kristy Morgan, who declined her "shot at love". On October 9, 2007, Nguyen released her second official single, "Stripper Friends". A video premiered via Yahoo! Music on February 26, 2008, and was released to iTunes on March 4, 2008. The single failed to chart. In April 2008, the single "Paralyze" and its accompanying music video were released via Yahoo! Music and iTunes. The "I Love U Remixes" EP was released to digital music retailers on April 7, 2009. On December 2, 2008, Nguyen released a self-help book, Hooking Up with Tila Tequila: A Guide to Love, Fame, Happiness, Success, and Being the Life of the Party (ISBN 9781439101537).