[1] Nuyen’s father abandoned her and her mother when she was young, and she was raised in Marseille by a cousin she calls "an Orchidaceae raiser who was the only person who gave a damn about me."

In her first role, she appeared as Liat, daughter of Bloody Mary (played by Juanita Hall), in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific.

[3] In 1978 Nuyen guest-starred with Peter Falk and Louis Jourdan in the Columbo episode "Murder Under Glass".

Nuyen appeared in several films including The Last Time I Saw Archie (1961) Satan Never Sleeps (1962), A Girl Named Tamiko (1962), Diamond Head (1963), Dimension 5 (1966), Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973), The Joy Luck Club (1993), and The American Standards (2008).

Both Nuyen and Shatner later collected notable accolades for their work on the show at the 1959 Theatre World Awards.

[8][9] She would later appear with Shatner in the 1973 made-for-TV movie The Horror at 37,000 Feet,[10] and afterward in a 1974 episode of the Kung Fu series entitled "A Small Beheading".

From 1963 to 1966, Nuyen was married to Thomas Gaspar Morell, a psychiatrist from New York, by whom she has a daughter, Fleur, who resides in Canada and works as a film make-up artist.