The actor recently started acting, but he confessed in his memoirs that he started acting long before, surviving a cursed youth and being imprisoned for 11 years.
Born in Los Angeles, California, in 1944, he is Danny Trejo from those players who have recently become famous. However, unlike the majority of this group, the slowness was not due to a lack of resources or roles that made them significant, but because all about the past, as it were geographically, nothing to do with Hollywood.
His first roles were small appearances as an outsider in the late 80s, when he was well over 40, but now at the age of 78, he is a true star who boasts that he has worked with some of the biggest names in the industry and has not stopped for a second. His IMDB file includes more than 400 credits, but among his memorable works we could mention Heat, Desperado and, of course, Machete, and the series Sons of Anarchy, From Dusk Till Dawn – while also participating in the film- or some episodes of Fraction Ead.
But Before becoming a star, Trejo had a varied life. When he was a child, he was abused by his father and in his youth he was already addicted to heroin. later, Drug trafficking would land him in prison more than once, and more than a decade behind bars interpolate The actor is not afraid to talk about the experiences that he lived in that very difficult time, and in fact, the time in prison will take him completely away from the criminal life, restoring sobriety and dealing with it. a new path that finally led him to the film industry. And by the way, it also gave him some records for his bad guy roles
Danny Trejo spoke fluently about his experience in prison in his memoir Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood, a book co-written with his friend Donal Logue and published in 2021, in which he makes truly honest statements. “I think he’s really saying, ‘Wait a minute.’ The guy you saw on the screen is not the whole picture,” he explains about the need to tell his story.
In them he explains how when he was little he understood strangulation as a normal punishment for childish pranks or how at the age of 8 he started smoking marijuana only to turn to heroin a few years later. AND Although he had nothing to do in the first 40 years of his life, he had always been active on the internet. Acting saved his life more than once, when he was not even an actor.
Acting was not new to me. I had done it to survive my youth
If his father struck him, he did not care. “Who cares? I don’t care, I didn’t want you to hug me anyway,” she snaps back. And it hurts that way.
Similarly, when he was incarcerated in three California prisons in the 1960s, he found himself getting it again: “There are two kinds of people in prison: there’s the predator and there’s the prey. And that’s it.” And so he learned to hold the account and became an expert in it: “He stands in the area of Saint Quentin. [una de las cárceles] and you know there is going to be an uproar. You have a knife in your belt and you pray to God, “Please don’t let this happen.” But do not be afraid. as, ‘Whoever comes to me, I will kill.’ And yet you have a knot in your stomach asking God, please, close us.
I’d rather be at the bottom of the manure pile
During this time in prison, 11 years, Trejo saw his emotions change, as he realized that he and other prisoners could end up dying. It was in 1968 when things started to change. His transfer to the prison of Soledad, in the tumult of the tumult; Trejo was accidentally hit in the head by a guard and ended up in solitary confinement for three months and the death penalty knocked on the door.
“It’s like I know more. I’m 24 and I’ve done it,” he thinks. “I said, ‘If you’re there, everything will be fine.’ And if you’re not, I’ll come.” Then he began to pray and promise God that he would be able to protect him, dropping the charges against him, and he was released from prison. So He decided to detox and dedicate his life to helping other addicts, which he still does to this day.
And that’s how In 1985, Trejo set foot in the cinema for the first time. One of the movies Train to Hell, where a young man who needed help and ended up being quickly hired by a stranger because he fits the bill perfectly. And so he would begin his new life and philosophy, which he holds today, convinced that the most important opportunity had been offered to him; “It doesn’t matter where you start. It matters where you end.”
