Name	Tila Tequila
Height
Naionality	Singapore
Date of Birth	October 24, 1981
Place of Birth	Singapore
Famous for

Nguyen was born in Singapore to French Vietnamese parents,[1] where her family emigrated from Vietnam after the Vietnam War.[4][5] She is the youngest of three children: she has one brother, Daniel (b. 1976), and a sister, Terri (b. 1979).[6] When she was one year old, she and her family lived in a neighborhood in Houston until they were admitted to a gated community run by a strict Buddhist temple.[7] The family left the community when Nguyen was eight.[8]

While in middle school, Nguyen became a tomboy and was eventually sent to a boarding school for six months for her combative behavior before transferring to another school.[8] While in high school, she used her sister's identification card to enter nightclubs, where she began taking drugs[8] and joined a gang. In her memoir, she would later explain that she felt "confused" and "lost" from various personal family and environmental issues and remained a virgin until she reached 15 years of age, when she also began smoking and engaging in drug abuse. She received her first of a series of tattoos, a scorpion on her back, during this time.[9][10] She also states that she recalled "punching walls until I passed out", and soon turned to writing poems in an attempt to release powerful emotions. In an interview with Import Tuner, Nguyen said she had been searching for a sense of identity: "I was really confused then, [because] at first I thought I was black, then I thought I was Hispanic and joined a cholo gang".[11] Later, friends outside the gang briefly helped turn her life around. However, her past caught up with her, and she fled to Queens, New York at the age of 16.[7] While still 16, she experienced a drive-by shooting in Houston. The following year, she became pregnant and suffered a miscarriage.[12]

Tequila graduated from Alief Hastings High School in 2000. She has cited the violent adolescence she had in Texas as her reason for becoming a model and moving to California in 2001.[13] 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."[14]