Trejo, Danny

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.”