Danny Trejo's Rise From Prison To Hollywood
Dressed in leather, with a muscular body covered with tattoos, Danny Trejo looks like he was ripped out of some crime story.
This is a story about an actor you all know from the movies "From Dusk Till Dawn" and "Desperado".
Dressed in leather, with a muscular body covered with tattoos, Danny Trejo looks like he was ripped out of some crime story. His face is showing he had a troubled past, and the criminal record of the Hollywood star confirms that - in fact, young Danny Trejo almost died in prison.
Determined to hire real Hispanic people, director Robert Rodriguez once saw Trey and decided to hire him for "From Dusk Till Dawn" (1994) and "Desperado" (1995). Those small roles led to roles with Hollywood icons such as Robert De Niro and Harrison Ford - who felt that his terrifying presence was not acting. Young Trejo had just become an adult when he ended up in prison in 1962 for drug dealing and robbery. He was 21 when he was arrested for selling some heroin to an undercover police officer. He spent a total of 11 years behind bars, surviving riots in prison, solitary confinement, and also the sentence to death.
Here is the very real background of one of the most recognizable - and threatening - Hollywood characters.
He was born on May 16, 1944. Trejo grew up in Echo Park in Los Angeles. And yes, he grew up very fast. His violent father, Dionisio, run away from Texas to California after injuring a man. He eventually turned himself in. In his father's absence, Trejo shared a room with his cousins in his grandmother's house, and eventually became close to his uncle. Uncle Gilbert was only six years older than Trey and naturally became more of a big brother than a father figure. While he was teaching Trejo how to box, he also introduced him to marijuana when Trejo was 8 years old. And later, he gave the twelve-year-old Trejo his first dose of heroin when Trejo caught him using it. "He was cool. He always had a lot of cash with him, " Trejo said of his uncle.
Things quickly escalated from there, and Trejo joined Gilbert in robberies and drug trafficking to satisfy their habits. At the age of 18, he was stuck in prison for the first time. He was already addicted to cocaine at the time. Trejo met Charles Manson during his brief stay in prison in 1961, remembering him as a "dirty, fat, skinny, white boy." After his release from prison, Trejo went crazy - from robbing liquor stores using grenades to stabbing a man in the face with a broken bottle of beer in a fight at a bar.
However, in 1965, Trey's life will change forever. Although he still claims that it was sugar, he was arrested for selling heroin to federal agents who worked on a secret mission. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, and he had a hard time surviving the brutal reality of Folsom, Soledad, and San Quentin prisons. Trejo recalled hearing the laughter of the other prisoners when one of them was stabbed in the back. Then he thought - Danny, you will die here. Amidst the chaos during the prison riots, Trejo was fighting with the prisoners and accidentally hit the guard in the head with a stone. He ended up in solitary confinement for three months. He then faced the possible death penalty for attempted murder.
And that was a complete turning point in his life. Trejo spent his evenings at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. He entered the acting world, but for years he was exclusively engaged for the roles of a gang member. However, when the screenwriter and former prisoner in San Quentin noticed his prison tattoos on the set, his career took a different direction. It was a long way from small roles of roles to leading roles, but Trejo eventually grew into a professional actor who worked together with Al Pacino and Nicolas Cage. Written especially for him, the film "Machete" (2010) earned 44 million dollars.
