By
NPR
Fans
know Danny Trejo for all the tough guys he's played in action movies
like Machete and From Dusk Till Dawn. He's been cast as that kind of
character since the start of his career. Before he was an actor, he
was an inmate, serving time in prisons across California. His
crimes were committed to fund his drug addiction, Trejo says. Behind
bars, he had a reputation as a fighter, boxing in tournaments in
every institution he was in.
When
he was in Salinas Valley State Prison in Soledad, Calif., Trejo says,
he was involved in a riot. "So we got sent to the hole, and
basically those are all gas chamber offenses," Trejo says. "I
just remember asking God to please let me die with dignity and if he
would do that, I would promise to say his name every day and help
anybody I could anyway I can." Trejo's charges were dropped
because there were no witnesses willing to testify. As a free man,
Trejo dedicated his life to helping other people.
"I
was a drug counselor, and one of the kids that I was working with,
about 18 years old, he called me and said, 'Hey, I'm having a big
problem down here, there's a lot of cocaine,' " he says. "He
gave me the address to a warehouse, so I thought he worked in a
warehouse," Trejo says.
As
soon as he got there, Trejo realized it was a movie set. The film was
Runaway Train, about two escaped convicts, played by Jon Voight and
Eric Roberts. After counseling the 18-year-old, Trejo was approached
by someone from the movie set. The man asked Trejo if he wanted to be
an extra in the film.
"I
mean, I've been in every penitentiary in the state — it was kind of
funny," Trejo says. He told them he'd give it a shot. They
handed him a shirt to wear, which revealed his prison tattoos,
screenwriter Eddie Bunker immediately recognized them: Bunker himself
had spent time in San Quentin State Prison, where he saw Trejo win a
famous boxing tournament.
The
screenwriter asked Trejo if he'd be up for training one of the actors
how to fight. "So I started training Eric Roberts how to box,"
Trejo says. Director Andrey Konchalovskiy liked Trejo's style so much
that he cast him in Runaway Train to fight Roberts in the ring.
"It's
like divine intervention," he says. "When you talk about my
big break, you know, I got a few of them in my life. Everything good
that has ever happened to me has happened as a direct result of
helping someone else," Trejo says. "Everything."
No comments:
Post a Comment