Danny Trejo

The Machete character didn't invent Danny Trejo's persona. It just gave it a name. He spent the 1960s cycling through San Quentin, Soledad, and Tracy on drug and robbery charges, won boxing titles in lightweight and welterweight divisions inside, and got sober in 1968 while waiting to learn if he'd face the death penalty after a prison riot. The path to Hollywood opened in 1985 when he visited a film set to help a sponsee stay clean. Edward Bunker, a former San Quentin inmate turned screenwriter, recognized him and got him hired as Eric Roberts' boxing coach on Runaway Train. The acting roles followed.

Filed for Chapter 11 in February 2023 owing roughly $2.5 million in back taxes, then sold his Arleta home for $828,000 to start paying it down. The bankruptcy was personal, not professional. His restaurant LLCs kept running because they're structured separately. By 2026, Trejo's Tacos was expanding into London on a crowdfund that hit £625,000 in investor commitments. He still shows up at his locations personally. The taco chain turned out to be the more durable business, which is the kind of reversal nobody predicted when he was still playing henchmen in somebody else's movie.

He's been sober since August 23, 1968, a date he counts to the day. In 2019, he crawled into an overturned SUV in Sylmar to pull out a special-needs child, telling the boy they had to use their superpowers while rescue workers freed the grandmother. The arc from death row to donut shops is so thorough it almost sounds made up.