Actor shares life experiences
By Joey Berlin
Originally published 02:28 p.m., February 29, 2008
Updated 02:28 p.m., February 29, 2008
To many moviegoers, Danny Trejo is probably more of a face than a name.
He’s a veteran of about 150 movies, including hits like “Desperado,” “Heat,” “Anaconda,” “Anchorman” and the “Spy Kids” films, but the name isn’t as recognizable as his long dark hair and weatherbeaten mug.
“The hardest thing to do,” Trejo told an audience Wednesday at Albert Taylor Hall, “is to be a nice guy when you look like me.”
Lines like that had a sizeable crowd laughing numerous times during the 90-minute appearance on the Emporia State University campus, but Trejo’s appearance carried a serious theme amid all the jokes and funny anecdotes.
Trejo grew up a troubled, drug-using youth in Los Angeles who spent time in youth authority and several California prisons, and by his own admission wasn’t a nice person. He went to prison for the last time in 1965, and in 1968 he said he came to the realization that he’d have to take alcohol and drugs out of his life if he were ever going to do anything useful. He said he realized there were only two kinds of people in the world: People who want to make a difference and people who want to take up space.
“Everything good that’s ever happened to me,” Trejo repeatedly the audience, “has happened as a direct result of helping someone else.”
Trejo used as an example the start of his acting career, which didn’t even come until he was 38 years old. He was working as a drug counselor — a job he still has today — and met a teenage client at the teen’s job on a movie set. The movie was 1985’s “Runaway Train.”
“Wow — you look just like a convict, and it’s a movie about prisoners. Gee, what a coincidence!” Trejo said, getting the audience to laugh again. After being spotted, he was asked to be an extra in the film and also got to use his boxing skills, training the movie’s costar, Eric Roberts, in the art of fighting.
“You call it a coincidence,” Trejo said of his good fortune in walking into a film career. “I call it my God.”
He told the crowd that if he had been left to his own devices, he’d still be in prison right now, taking up space.
After speaking for less than half an hour, Trejo patiently took dozens of questions from audience members, who asked him about his criminal past and what stars such as Robert DeNiro, Quentin Tarantino and Antonio Banderas are like. When one audience member asked Trejo how he’d like to be remembered after he dies, Trejo, 63, said he’d foremost like to be remembered as a good parent to his three children, who are all by different women.
“Their moms hate me,” he said. “But my kids love me. ... And I’ve gotta say that’s all that matters.”