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Danny Trejo has no plans to retire.
The craggy-faced Latino action star spent decades in the B-movie trenches, playing ex-cons and bodyguards, tough guys and prison thugs —drawing inspiration from his real-life stints in California state facilities in San Quentin, Soledad, Folsom, and Vacaville—before becoming “a Mexican superhero” with Robert Rodriguez’s Machete series. But at 78, Trejo continues to chop his way through roles silly, schlocky and (occasionally) sublime.
His 22 credits this year to date, a pretty average annual output for Trejo, include a couple high-profile projects: voicing Stronghold in Universal’s animated blockbuster Minions: The Rise of Gru, a cameo as Rancor Keeper in Disney+ Star Wars series The Book of Boba Fett, alongside a slew of starring roles in straight-to-online fare whose titles tell you all you need to know about their content: Vampfather, A Tale of Two Guns, Renegades, Wolf Mountain.
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“I’m the king of independent movies, and I love it!” Trejo boasts, then undercuts his mean guy screen persona with a booming laugh. “I like doing them because on an independent movie it’s, ‘I pawned my car for this, my mum loaned me the money for this.’ It’s serious stuff. An independent movie is more serious than a billion-dollar movie.”
Trejo has had his share of small parts in big movies. His death scene with Robert De Niro in Michael Mann’s seminal crime drama Heat is legendary, and he’s appeared alongside the likes of Harrison Ford (Six Days Seven Nights), Antonio Banderas (Desperado) and peak box office Nicolas Cage (Con Air).
And it’s not as if he needs the money. The L.A. native, born and raised in Echo Park, has smartly invested the proceeds from his long career in a series of successful business ventures, including Trejo’s Tacos, Trejo’s Coffee & Donuts and a record label, Trejo’s Music.
But, in true AFM Legend style, Trejo says he’ll never stop making movies. “I was sitting on a porch with Danny Glover doing Bad Asses on the Bayou,2 he recalls, referencing one the lesser-known of his 400-plus IMDb credits. “We’re watching a guy, maybe 65, 70, sweeping the parking lot. Glover looks and me and says: ‘That could have be us, right there.’ So how can I complain? I’ve worked in my life. I’ve put out fires, I’ve done cement. I’ve done trash. I know what work is. Pretending to be a gangster, that’s not hard.”
You’re definitely someone who paid his dues in this business, climbing up the ranks from extra to top of the call sheet.
I remember when I first got on the call sheet. I didn’t even have a name. It was just: “tattooed guy.”
When did you know that acting was going to be a real job?
It was on the set of [1985’s] Runaway Train. I met a friend, [screenwriter] Eddie Bunker, who was a friend of mine in prison. He remembered I was the welter- weight champion in San Quentin. He said, “Danny, are you still boxing? We need somebody to train one of the actors [Eric Roberts] how to box. It pays $320 a day.”
I was working as a drug counsellor, making maybe $190, $220 a week before taxes. So I asked: “How badly you want this guy beat up?” From that moment on, my entire life changed. For the first years of my career, I was “bad guy,” “mean guy,” “Chicano dude,” “tattoo guy.” But I always made my $320 a day.
Did you feel typecast?
The first time I got interviewed, by some girl probably fresh out of interview school, she asked me that: “Don’t you feel you’re being typecast as the mean Chicano dude with the tattoos?” I said: “But I am the mean Chicano dude with the tattoos!” I was just proud to be working.
I think I’m the king of independent movies, and I love it! I like doing them. I did a movie with Harrison Ford, called Six Days, Seven Nights, in Hawaii. It was like three months in Hawaii. I probably worked 15 or 16 days out of it. I get bored. On really high-budget movies, sometimes you’re just sit- ting in your trailer. I can’t stand being in trailers: It reminds me of a prison cell.
Who was the first person to see you as more than just the “scary Chicano with tattoos”?
Robert Rodriguez. We did a movie called Desperado. It was in Mexico. And nobody at the time really knew who [the film’s star] Antonio Banderas was. I was on set and everyone was asking me for autographs and taking pictures. Robert says: “Hey Danny, everybody thinks you’re the star of this movie.” I said: “You mean I’m not?” We talked and he said: “I’ve got this movie I’ve always wanted to do: Machete.” We talked about it and when we did [Rodriguez-directed] Spy Kids, I was Uncle Machete. Then he did Grindhouse [2007] and we did the fake trailer for Machete. And the minute we walked out of the theater, every- one was saying, “You have to do Machete! It’ll be the first Mexican superhero.”
How did that franchise change things for you?
I knew things had changed after we finished Machete. It was Halloween and I opened the door and there’d be little kids there, Mexican kids, dressed like Machete, with little fake mus- taches and everything. It wasn’t Batman or Superman, they were playing this Mexican guy. It brought tears to my eyes.
Are you going to make a third Machete film, the rumored Machete in Space?
Do me a favor, send an email to Robert Rodriguez and tell him to stop being afraid and do it! He’s had two winners, but he’s afraid to do the third one.
After all your years in the business, do you still get impostor syndrome?
Every day. I’m afraid somebody’s going to wake me up and I’m back in prison: “Dan, it’s time for chow. You were mumbling something in your sleep about Robert De Niro.” You know, I hear some actors complain on set. And I think: Have you ever tarred a roof in 90-degree weather? That’s work. This is playing cowboys and Indians.
You mentioned De Niro, and it was your performance in Heat that convinced a lot of people that you were a real actor. What did you learn from him on that film?
I owe my performance in that movie to De Niro. We became friends and he’s just an unbelievable, beautiful man. I love his politics. We had the big death scene in that film and I asked: “How should I play this?2 I think I was planing to do it like John Wayne, real macho. Bob — I can call him Bob — says: “I think you’re already dead and you’ve got just enough life left to beg me to kill you.” That film changed everything for me. I mean: De Niro, [Al] Pacino, Val Kilmer, Jon Voight. And Danny Trejo. I remember Bob did an interview for the film and he said: “Danny held his own.”
After more than 433 screen credits, is there any role you’d still love to do?
There’s a film I’ve been trying to get made, called Valdez Is Coming. It’s a remake of an old Western in the ’70s with Burt Lancaster play- ing a Mexican. Now I’m not saying I’m equivalent to Burt Lancaster. But I am a real Mexican. I’ve got a real accent. And there’s Viva Zapata!, that ’50s movie with Marlon Brando playing Emiliano Zapata, who was a real Mexican hero. He was just as big as Pancho Villa, but Pancho was fighting the revolution in the North, Zapata was fighting the revolution in the South.
That ’50s movie’s beautiful and Brando is great actor, don’t get me wrong, but I just wish I could do a Zapata movie to show the Mexican kids we had heroes. We had real heroes who fought revolutions with sticks and knives. My kids are my real legacy, but if I have a film legacy, I’d like that to be it.
Interview edited for length and clarity.
This story first appeared in The Hollywood Reporter’s Nov. 4 daily issue at the American Film Market.
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