In Conversation: On Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood

Danny Trejo is one of Hollywood’s most recognizable, prolific, and beloved character actors. Famed for his ultra-baddie roles in series like Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy, and director Robert Rodriguez’s global, billion-dollar Spy Kids and Machete film franchises. Killed on screen at least 100 times, Trejo has been shot, stabbed, hanged, chopped up, squished by an elevator, and even melted into a mass of bloody goo. Off-screen, he’s a hero beloved by recovery communities and fans alike. Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood (Atria Books), co-written with fellow actor Donal Logue, is an unsparing telling of a much more complicated story. It’s an up and down journey that starts in an abusive home and includes struggles with heroin addiction, stints in some of the country’s most notorious state prisons from an early age, global fame, and his emergence as a powerful public speaker – from prison yards to NPR – sharing his road to recovery and redemption. Director Rodriguez praised the book, noting that “Danny’s incredible life story shows that even though we may fall down at some point in our lives, it’s what we do when we stand back up that really counts.”

Bill Teck is a director/producer based in Miami. He recently directed the Warner Bros. documentary One Day Since Yesterday: Peter Bogdanovich & The Lost American Film, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for a Venezia Classici Award for best documentary before being acquired by Netflix. As a producer/executive producer or director, Teck is responsible for television programs for PBS and USA Broadcasting, such as OutLoud, generation ñ, LIVE!, A Peña Family Album: The Best of Que Pasa USA, Content Miami, New Florida, Nuestra Risa and ñ Life with Melissa Hernandez. He’s the co-writer of the Simon & Schuster Fireside Press humor book The Official Spanglish Dictionary: Un Users Guia to More Than 300 Words and Phrases That Aren’t Exactly Español or Ingles, and his writing has appeared in Latina, New York Press, Street Magazine, Rock & Rap Confidential and the Miami Herald. Teck was named by Newsweek as “One of 20 Latinos to Watch” and “One of the 100 Most Influential Hispanics in America,” and has been honored by the National Council of La Raza.

Donal Logue was born in Canada to Irish parents and raised on the Mexican border in Nogales, Arizona, Calexico, and El Centro, California. He is a veteran of more than 70 Hollywood films and hundreds of television episodes, and he is also the co-author of Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood (Atria Books). Chronicling the life of prolific character actor Danny Trejo – famed for his ultra-baddie roles in series like Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy, and director Robert Rodriguez’s global, billion-dollar Spy Kids and Machete film franchises – it’s an up and down journey that starts in an abusive home and ends in global fame. In between are struggles with heroin addiction, stints in some of the country’s most notorious state prisons from an early age, and Trejo’s emergence as a powerful public speaker – from prison yards to NPR – sharing his road to recovery and redemption. Director Rodriguez praised the book, noting that “Danny’s incredible life story shows that even though we may fall down at some point in our lives, it’s what we do when we stand back up that really counts.”