Danny Trejo

Native Mexican-American character actor

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Born 1944 · age 82United States

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Wikipedia
49 languages
Cross-language footprint
Age
82
Born 1944
Known for
Zootopia 2
2025

Summary

Updated 2026-06-09

He's played the heavy in dozens of films — convict, gangster, silent enforcer — so many times that his face became shorthand for menace. Then Robert Rodriguez gave the glowering character actor a name, Machete, and the bit part became a franchise.

Biography

About

Born in Los Angeles on May 16, 1944, Trejo's film career began in 1985 with Runaway Train, followed by his first credited role in Death Wish 4: The Crackdown two years later. Through the '90s and early 2000s he worked steadily in small parts — inmates and criminals in Heat, Desperado, Con Air, From Dusk till Dawn — the kind of roles that stack up quietly until the face is everywhere. In 2001 he appeared as Isador "Machete" Cortez in Spy Kids, a side character Rodriguez spun into a lead: Machete arrived in 2010 as a full exploitation film with Trejo at center, followed by Machete Kills in 2013.…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Danny Trejo

Danny Trejo

said7 Aug 2019

Everything good that has happened to me has happened as a direct result of helping someone else. Everything.

— "Actor Danny Trejo saves a trapped baby from an overturned car" (August 7, 2019)

Danny Trejo

said29 Oct 2018

I made a deal with God. I said, ‘Let me die with dignity.

— On renouncing a life of crime in “Danny Trejo: the hardest man in Hollywood” in The Guardian (October 29, 2018)

Danny Trejo

said29 Oct 2018

People say, ‘You always play the mean Chicano dude with tattoos.’ Well, I am the mean Chicano dude with tattoos…So they got it right.

— On being typecasted in “Danny Trejo: the hardest man in Hollywood” in The Guardian (October 29, 2018)

Danny Trejo

saidundated

Standing on the yard in San Quentin, knowing that there's a riot coming, you're absolutely scared to death with every fiber of your body…[But] you have to pretend you're not.

— On how serving time in prison prepared him for acting in “Danny Trejo On Acting, Addiction And Playing 'The Mean Chicano Dude'” in NPR

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

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