The 80-year-old Danny Trejo is busy than he has ever been.
As he prepares for planned appearances at conventions this summer and finishes shooting a film titled Seven Cemeteries, the actor, who will celebrate his milestone birthday on May 16, tells PEOPLE that he is feeling “blessed” in the midst of his preparations.
“I feel blessed, first of all, because I wasn’t supposed to make it out of the ’60s — and I mean 1960s,” he adds in response. During that difficult period in my life, nobody believed that I would be able to make it out of that situation alive. The moment has come for me to be on the good Lord’s timing.
Before Trejo began his career as an actor with the film Runaway Train in 1985, he had to overcome a difficult upbringing while growing up in California as well as a series of prison sentences while he was in his 20s. A famous body of work has been built up by Trejo via hundreds of roles, including films such as Heat from 1995 and the Machete action pictures. This body of work has been accumulated almost forty years later.
whether someone were to ask me whether I ever envisioned anything, I would say that I never imagined being released from jail. It was in 1969 that I heard the parole board say, “Bring us back a life sentence.” That was the last thing I heard them say. The phrase “We are sick and tired of you” is said by Trejo. There was no return for me. Simply said, each and every day is a gift for me. I mean, every single day.
Danny Trejo, Danielle Trejo, and Gilbert Trejo, who is a filmmaker, are Trejo’s three adult children, and Trejo has said that he will celebrate his birthday by having supper with them. “We’ll find a restaurant that we can all agree on, where you have vegan, vegetarian, anything,” he adds in response. “I’m not vegan, I eat healthy, but I’ll not pass up a steak.”
Trejo considers the two Machete action movies that he participated in and directed by Robert Rodriguez to be among the most memorable moments of his career. These films were released in 2010 and 2013. Another thing that he recalls about Heat is the fact that he had the opportunity to collaborate with a number of famous actors, such as Robert De Niro, Val Kilmer, and John Voight.
“I had the opportunity to collaborate with all of the major players. Al Pacino and the other individuals with whom I was collaborating were enormous. It was amusing because, before to that, you had never been a part of that sort of group that was considered to be high echelon,” he remarked. Man, I’m sitting here dining with Robert De Niro and we’re talking about a scene from the movie Heat. Do you understand what I mean? “It was like, wow, I’m really an actor,” I thought to myself for the first time.
Trejo, who is now 80 years old, continues to be active in the acting industry. According to IMDb, he had twenty acting parts, voice acting roles, or film appearances in the years 2023 and 2024 alone.
When he is not at work, he claims that he takes pleasure in driving his antique automobiles, which include a Chevrolet Bel Air from 1956 and a Buick Riviera from 1955. Trejo has a number of new projects that he intends to work on, and one of them is the long-awaited third Machete movie, which is called Machete Kills in Space. Trejo wants Rodriguez, who is 55 years old, to write the script for the film.
“The world is waiting for Robert Rodriguez to do Machete Kills in Space,” according to his statement. “I’m not kidding — I’ve been all over the world, they have asked me, ‘When are we doing Machete in space?'”
