How Danny Trejo Went From Prison Inmate To Action Star

With his pockmarked face and trademark tattoos, Danny Trejo has become one of the most beloved celebrities in Hollywood today. After spending years working as a character actor, playing crooks and convicts, Trejo finally slashed his way into the spotlight with his portrayal of Machete Cortez in both the Spy Kids franchise and the Machete series. However, Trejo's rise to fame had quite a few twists and turns along the way. Years before he took up acting, Trejo was actually a violent criminal who'd spent time in multiple prisons. So how did he turn his life around so drastically? Well, put away your throwing knives as we look at how Danny Trejo went from prison inmate to action star.

After Trejo arrived in San Quentin, his fellow inmates discovered that Danny wasn't locked up with them...they were locked up with Danny. The young crook quickly made a name for himself by donning a pair of boxing gloves and knocking bums out. Speaking with Men's Fitness, Trejo said he'd been busting noses since age eight when his aforementioned uncle (who was 13 at the time) used him as a "punching bag" during sparring sessions. So naturally, when Trejo stepped into the San Quentin ring, he quickly became the king of prison pugilism.

"Boxing, in jail, literally made me a celebrity," Trejo explained, and when he was eventually shipped to a new prison, he kept it up with all those jabs and uppercuts. According to Trejo, he was both the lightweight and welterweight champ in three separate prisons: San Quentin, Folsom, and Soledad. Of course, Trejo was just as scary outside the ring. As the head of a small gang, Trejo made quite a bit of cash by intimidating weaker inmates, forcing them to fork over protection money. Naturally, most people agreed to pay up because who's going to say no to Danny Trejo?

It was also behind bars that Trejo picked up his infamous tattoo. If you've ever seen the man shirtless, you've probably noticed the sombrero-wearing, cleavage-baring cowgirl scrawled across Trejo's chest. That iconic piece of work was done courtesy of a tattoo artist named Harry "Super Jew" Ross. However, because Trejo kept getting sent to different prisons, Ross wasn't able to finish the cowgirl all at once. Instead, whenever the two met up—at San Quentin, then Folsom, then Soledad—Ross would work on the piece just a little bit more. All in all, as Trejo put it, it took "two and half years, three penitentiaries, and it's the most famous tattoo in the world."

While his prayer back in solitary was a good start, if Danny Trejo really wanted to put his life back together, he needed to knuckle down and get sober. You see, Trejo had been struggling with substance abuse since he was a little kid. He started using marijuana at age eight (courtesy of his uncle), and he began shooting heroin at age 12 (once again, thanks to his uncle). On top of the weed and the smack, there was a whole lot of booze, and when you shake all that stuff up, you get an explosive cocktail of stabbings, fistfights, and armed robberies.

According to Trejo, he pulled off all his heists to pay for his drug habit, so he desperately needed to get clean. Determined to set things right, he joined Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, and today, Trejo has been sober for nearly 50 years. And after he was released from prison, he decided to lend a hand to his fellow man, working as a drug counselor for 15 years. 

Today, Trejo is still counseling people and speaking to at-risk youth, encouraging kids to make better choices so one day they'll find success. And how does Danny Trejo define success? Well, as the actor put it, "My definition of success is waking up in the morning clean and sober and having three kids that absolutely adore me."

In 1985, Trejo was working as a drug counselor when he got a call from a client who desperately needed help. This guy was working on the set of Runaway Train, a prison thriller starring Jon Voight and Eric Roberts, and he was struggling with an urge to use cocaine.

Being a real-life superhero, Trejo showed up on the set to give the guy some assistance, but it wasn't long before someone approached Trejo and asked if he'd like to be an extra in the movie, playing the part of inmate. Trejo took the job, but as he was changing into his outfit, screenwriter Eddie Bunker (who played Mr. Blue in Reservoir Dogs) spotted his chest tattoo. Bunker had also served time, and when he saw the scantily-clad cowgirl, he remembered that Trejo had done some boxing behind bars. It was kind of an amazing coincidence, especially since the filmmakers were looking for someone to teach Eric Roberts about the sweet science.

According to Trejo, Roberts was working on a boxing scene, and he allegedly kept hurting his fellow cast mates. So Bunker asked Trejo if he could give the young guy a few lessons in fisticuffs. But as the ex-champ taught Roberts the proper way to throw a punch, he caught the eye of director Andrey Konchalovskiy who was so impressed with Trejo that he offered him a much bigger part as the guy who squares off against Roberts on-screen. It was Trejo's first role, the one that kickstarted his acting career, and it was all thanks to that wild tattoo...or maybe the man had a little bit of angelic assistance. "It's like divine intervention," Trejo once said. "For me to meet Eddie Bunker on a movie set. It was amazing."

Cinema is full of fantastic actor-director collaborations: De Niro and Scorsese, Mifune and Kurosawa, John Wayne and John Ford. And while it's not quite as legendary as those famous duos, we can't forget about Danny Trejo and Robert Rodriguez. The two first met while working on Desperado, where Rodriguez was struck by Trejo's "natural magnetism." Rodriguez thought Trejo had the perfect look to play the knife-wielding assassin Navajas and, strangely enough, while working on the film Trejo and Rodriguez discovered they were actually second cousins.

After their first film, the two quickly formed a personal and professional bond that would lead to nine movies, including Spy Kids and From Dusk Till Dawn. And that's not counting the third Predators film (which Rodriguez produced), the From Dusk Till Dawn TV show (which Rodriguez created), and the fake trailer that popped up in the Rodriguez-Tarantino joint Grindhouse. However, it's safe to say the two are best known for working on Machete, the 2010 exploitation flick that made Danny Trejo a household name.

Rodriguez was inspired to make this nutso B-picture from pretty much the first moment he laid eyes on Trejo. "It's an idea I came up with back during Desperado," he explained to IGN. "When I met Danny, I said, 'This guy should be like the Mexican Jean-Claude Van Damme or Charles Bronson," and that's when Rodriguez began formulating a plan to transform this tattooed ex-con into a machete-wielding action star. And, naturally, the respect and admiration goes both ways, with Trejo praising Rodriguez as "the most innovative director I've ever worked with."

Everybody knows that under his leathery façade, Danny Trejo is a big ol' softie. He's a dad, a drug counselor, a dude who gives food to the homeless, and naturally, Trejo is a big-time dog lover. In fact, the actor is such a fan of our four-legged friends that he's dedicated countless hours to making the world a safer place for pets.

With his ex-wife Debbie, Trejo founded a group called K9 Compassion, a rescue organization that emphasizes the importance of spaying and neutering. The actor has worked with various groups like Best Friends Animal Society and the Villalobos Rescue Center, he's spoken with high school students about proper pet care, and he's appeared in ads like the one above supporting Friends of Animals. And like any dedicated dog lover, Trejo believes in adoption and, as of 2016, had four cute canines of his own.

Really, looking out for man's best friend is just second nature to the action star because, as he explained to Inked Magazine, "We called the dogs in out of the wild. We built the fire and brought them in—they're our responsibility."

With over 300 movies to his name, Danny Trejo just might be the uncrowned king of action cinema. The man has played in mainstream spectacles like Heat and Machete, and he's starred in more bloody, badass B-movies than you can possibly imagine. We're talking films with incredible titles like Dead Again in Tombstone, The Night Crew, and Bad Ass 3: Bad Asses on the Bayou.

But even though he's one macho man, Trejo has his limits when it comes to screen action. In fact, he's very opinionated when it comes to the topic of stunt work. After Tom Cruise injured himself filming Mission: Impossible – Fallout, Trejo shared some serious thoughts about stars who put their lives on the line. Talking with Yahoo! Movies in a Facebook chat (via ScreenCrush), Trejo said, "I know that all the big stars hate me to say this, but I don't want to risk 80 peoples' jobs just to say I got big huevos on The Tonight Show."

According to Trejo, it's irresponsible for a leading man or woman to jeopardize a film shoot in order to crawl up buildings or hold onto the side of planes. If the lead gets injured, that might ruin the entire movie, and then everybody loses a paycheck. "We have stunt people who do that stuff," Trejo explained. "And if they get hurt, I'm sorry to say, but they just need to put a mustache on another Mexican, and we can keep going. But if I get hurt, everybody's out of a job. So I don't choose to do that."