JAKARTA: Actress Nikita Mirzani says her parents’ quarrels helped spur her love for tattoos.

“A long time ago my mother and father fought a lot. Rather than resorting to drugs, my friend had a tattoo studio so I went to get tattoos. I diverted the pain to tattoos, and the pain disappeared,” she said Friday in a television interview, as quoted by kompas.com.

Nikita got her first tattoo in 2007. Her mother, she recalled, was not amused. “My mother was doing the washing, and then I showed it to her [and asked], ‘Ma, is this nice?’… I got splashed with water,” she said.

Her father discovered the tattoo when she was asleep. The discovery led to a heated debate between the two.