We filmed in cells c545 to c550," Trejo remembers. Blood Out, and I spent about six weeks in my old cell. So it came as a great surprise to Trejo in 1993 when he was sent back to San Quentin, this time under circumstances much different from his previous visit: Art was imitating life. For the first time, he was within grasp of something that had always eluded him - success - and Trejo worked furiously on a string of films, channeling the rewards to his children ("They thank me for having them when I had money").
"When I got my first paycheck I thought they made a mistake!" he remembers. Three weeks later, Danny Trejo's Hollywood introduction was complete, and his friend was still clean. Later, a former San Quentin inmate on the set recognized Trejo as the lightweight boxing champion of the south block and landed him the position of personal fight trainer to Eric Roberts for a fee of $350 per day. Trejo was back in prison blues before he could answer ("I just looked hip," he brags). "Can you look like a convict?" the man asked him. While biding time with his friend, a crew member approached Trejo with a question. Trejo suddenly found himself surrounded by hundreds of extras draped in designer prison duds. That friend worked as a production assistant on Runaway Train, an action film starring Jon Voight and Eric Roberts as prison escapees who board a speeding freight train about to derail. When one of those friends, an 18-year-old recovering addict, nearly fell off the wagon for a line of cocaine, Trejo decided to distract his friend by visiting him at work ("I hang out with people who want to stay clean"). While Trejo succeeded with his cold turkey approach to quitting, some of his friends had a harder time resisting temptation. "I knew I had a choice to make," he admits, "whether I was going to spend my life in prison or whether I was going to try something different." That something different arrived when he became a drug and alcohol intervention counselor, a job which forced him to come face to face with his longtime drug usage.
When Trejo's term in California's San Quentin concluded in 1985, he finally gave up drugs and alcohol. Witness his prolific film and television career, which was jumpstarted as result of his desire to help a friend in need. He wants to share with them the secret of his success, something that came to him when he discovered and adopted a simple, life-affirming mantra - "good things happen to good people."Ĭan You Look Like a Convict?ĝanny Trejo is living proof that good things happen to good people.
#SPY KIDS THOUGHT TRAIN MOVIE#
Trejo doesn't want to impress the students with Hollywood gossip or movie set anecdotes. While in Austin shooting director Robert Rodriguez's new caper Spy Kids (see "Shoot for the Stars," p.62) Trejo has volunteered (yes, volunteered!) his time off to speak to a group of some 50 students at the Eastside high school - many of whom he recognizes as carbon copies of his former self - all in an effort to address issues of drug abuse, education, and crime. But on this May afternoon, he is appearing at Travis High School not as Danny Trejo the actor, but as Danny Trejo the reformed criminal - husband, father of three, drug and alcohol intervention counselor to many, and youth outreach advisor of East Los Angeles' program for young fathers. He has appeared in more than 20 films, including Michael Mann's Heat and John Frankenheimer's Reindeer Games, usually cast as a derelict or small-time thug.
#SPY KIDS THOUGHT TRAIN SERIAL#
These days, Trejo is recognized as Razor Charlie, the knife-wielding thug in From Dusk Till Dawn, or as Johnny-23, the serial rapist in Con Air. "Eleven years," the actor replies with a smirk.īefore Danny Trejo was an actor, he was a convict, one who spent nearly 15 years in "every penitentiary in the state of California" - on charges ranging from drug trafficking to robbery. "How much did that cost?" inquires a teen boy with electric pink hair.
#SPY KIDS THOUGHT TRAIN SKIN#
The apprehension of Trejo's fans no doubt stems, in part, from the physical attributes that have made him such a perfect bad guy for the silver screen: His sunken, beady eyes and weathered complexion are a roadmap of experience his dark, leathery skin is masked by tattoos. At Travis High School, where he has come to make a presentation, students and teachers alike nervously clamor around the actor with their Sharpie markers and Polaroid cameras. The busboys at Güero's stare at Danny Trejo hesitantly, unsure if they should ask him for his autograph.
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