A native of the East Los Angeles section of Pocoina, Danny Trejo spent his formative years in the California penal system, scoring drugs, fighting and smoldering in solitary, all fine research for the many roles he would later play. Despite heroin addiction and alcoholism, he became an undefeated lightweight and welterweight boxing champ at San Quentin before joining a 12-step program and straightening his life out prior to his parole in 1969. Outside, Trejo's speaking ability made him a star on the AA and NA (Narcotics Anonymous) circuit, and it was in his capacity as a drug counselor that he answered the call of someone desperately wanting to stay clean and came to the set of "Runaway Train" (1985). Asked to do some extra work, he took off his shirt, exposing his jail house tattoos, and the sight of Trejo's heavily inked torso jogged acclaimed prison novelist Eddie Bunker's memory that they had served time together in San Quentin. Bunker, remembering him as fighter in the joint, pulled him into a boxing scene with Eric Roberts"
The tattoos combined with a face like chewed leather and several cavernous scars have kept him busy ever since playing thugs and cons and menacing villains, the most harrowing experience coming when he returned to San Quentin for Taylor Hackford's prison drama "Bound By Honor" (1993). ("That was some heavy s*** . . . I would get a look, and it would be like I'd never left.") Writer-director Allison Anders awarded him a much-needed furlough from prison films when she cast him as an Echo Park junkie in "Mi Vida Loca/My Crazy Life" (1994), and he sandwiched parts as Certain Doom, a dagger-throwing assassin, in "Desperado" (1995) and Razor Charlie in "From Dusk Till Dawn" (1996) for Robert Rodriguez around his role as a bank robber in Michael Mann's "Heat" (1995). Trejo's decade of coloring the background in bad guy bits had finally led to featured exposure, his most significant work to date coming as Johnny 23, the third most psychotic member of the planeload of escaped convicts, in "Con-Air" (1997). He also appeared in "The Replacement Killers" (1998), starring Mira Sorvino and Chow Yun-Fat. In 2002, Trejo reunited with Antonio Banderas and Robert Rodriguez to ilm both "Spy Kids 2: The Island Of Lost Dreams" and also appeared in the extreme action film "xXx." Also in 2002, Trejo filmed "Once Upon A Time In Mexico", a western crime feature.
Although Trejo is known for his hard-egded characters on screen, he spends his personal time with family and counseling children at several inner city schools. He uses his face as a "hook" to stop kids from doing things that could cause them to do time.