Throughout his career, Danny Trejo has been one of Hollywood's most popular tough guys. Before beginning, a career in acting Trejo was a labor foreman at construction sights. He frequently found himself in trouble with the law and the actor has even suggested that his appearance contributed to this.
Trejo eventually served a five-year prison sentence and while working as a youth drug counselor as part of his parole, he got offered his first role. Here has since gone on to appear in over 150 movies and TV shows. Here are his best movies according to IMDb.
Runaway Train (7.1)
This was Danny Trejo's first-ever role and he didn't disappoint. Think of it as Prison Break immediately after Scofield and his buddies are outside prison walls. In the Runaway Train, Trejo stars as a convict who is a boxing champion. The movie follows Manny (John Voight), a hardened criminal who escapes an Alaskan prison together with a younger prisoner called Buck.
The two convicts hop into a freight train but the engineer suddenly succumbs to a stroke, leaving the train out of control. They thus find themselves trapped together with a railroad worker named Sara. For his role, Voight received an Oscar nomination.
Wish Man (7.2)
In this 2019 biographical film, a highway patrol officer Frank Shankwitz survives a deadly accident while pursuing a suspect in Arizona. His superior Sgt. Eddie Newman suggests that he spends time with a critically ill boy called Michael as part of his rehabilitation process.
Michael's dying wish is to be a motorcycle officer too so he sees Frank as his role model. A friendship develops between the two and this eventually leads to Frank being instrumental in establishing the popular Make-A-Wish foundation.
Desperado (7.2)
Back when Antonio Banderas was at his prime, he gave a spectacular performance as the Mexican gunslinger El mariachi in Desperado. The movie also had cameos from Quentin Tarantino and Boardwalk Empire's Steve Buscemi. Trejo played Navajas, a knife-throwing henchman working for the drug lord known as Bucho.
After Bucho kills El Mariachi's girlfriend and shoots his hand, he vows to get revenge. He arrives in Bucho's town with weapons in a guitar case and begins to cause havoc. During his journey of vengeance, he also falls in love with a bookstore owner called Carolina (Salma Hayek).
Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy (7.2)
Here's a movie that was ranked 113th on Empire Magazine's list of 500 Greatest Movies of All Time. In the movie, San Diego's celebrity anchor Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrel) faces a major challenge when a very ambitious female anchor is brought in to his company.
The film which also stars other popular comedians like Steve Carell, David Koechner, and Seth Rogen has Danny Trejo making a brief appearance as a bartender. Highly thought of as a classic in its genre, Time Out also ranked Anchorman 6th on its list of 100 Greatest Comedies Of All Time.
From Dusk Till Dawn (7.2)
This horror flick is packed with a number of talented actors that you normally don't see in the genre. Quentin Tarantino wrote the script while Robert Rodriguez sat on the director's chair. And apart from Danny Trejo starring as Razor Charlie, George Clooney, Salma Hayek, and Harvey Keitel had major roles too.
The movie follows brothers Seth and Richard who are on the run after a violent bank robbery. They escape into Mexico where they plat to meet a drug kingpin and pay him his dues. But first, they must find a place to spend the night so they hop into a strip bar. Well, it turns out everyone in the bar is a vampire.
The Book Of Life (7.3)
This 2014 animated film stars Narcos: Mexico's Diego Luna as Manolo. The young Manolo is in a dilemma as he doesn't know whether to fulfill his family's expectations or do what his heart desires. he eventually decides to go on an adventure that takes him through various fantasy worlds. Danny Trejo voices Manolo's grandfather Luis Sanchez.
The film was a huge commercial success, grossing $99.8 million globally. It also did exceptionally well in Mexico where Diego Luna and Trejo hail from. The Book Of Life also won an Annie. Though there have been talks of a sequel, none has come to fruition so far.
Grindhouse (7.5)
The story of Danny Trejo's appearance in Grindhouse is an interesting one. In the double-feature, a fake trailer for a movie called Machete is shown in which Trejo is the star. Direct Robert Rodriguez had actually written Machette in 1993 but the movie had never gone into production.
After Gridnhouse, interest for Machette grew and so Rodriguez made the feature film in 2010. In the movie, a Mexican Federale called Machete Cortez ( Danny Trejo) goes on a mission to rescue a kidnapped girl. The film ended up becoming a cult classic.
Blood In, Blood Out (8.0)
In the movie, Danny Trejo plays a hardened criminal called Geronimo. The 1993 film follows step-brothers Paco, Cruz, and their cousin Miko. Events begin in 1972 where the three relatives are said to be members of the "Vatos Locos" gang in East Los Angeles.
Crime and drugs soon alter their lives in ways they didn't expect. Miklo gets arrested and sent to San Quentin State Prison where he ends up fitting right in. Cruz ends up becoming an extraordinary artist but a drug addiction problem proves to be his undoing. Paco, on the other hand, becomes a police officer.
Heat (8.2)
How cool is it to play a character with the same name as yours? In the movie, Danny Trejo stars alongside Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. He plays Trejo, a robber and getaway driver of Neil's gang. Trejo and his wife are later killed by a criminal called Wiangro who has betrayed the gang. Danny Trejo also served as a crime consultant for the movie since he had served time behind bars in real life for armed robbery.
Heat was a critical and commercial success, making $187 million globally. The movie is also said to have inspired future real-life robberies, including the infamous Bank of America robbery in 1997. The main suspect Larry Phillips was even found with a VHS copy of Heat in his house.
The Short History Of The Long Road (8.5)
One of Trejo's less violent movies sees Disney Channel star Sabrina Carpenter playing a teen called Nola. The young girl has always had a rocky relationship with her father Clint (Steven Ogg). The daddy-daughter duo moves across America in an RV
They make a stop at an abandoned house and Clint tries to get some money by doing mechanical repairs to anyone who is willing. However, Sabrina won't stop stealing and when she steals a credit card from aa mechanic (Trejo), he decides to take her under his wing and ends up having a better relationship with her than her dad.