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Standing up at a banquette inside the classic Hollywood restaurant Musso & Frank on a recent afternoon, Trejo tells an elderly man hovering uncertainly in the doorway to "come on in," imitates director Robert Rodriguez's text-happy fingers, gestures to the waiter for a refill of his cranberry and 7-Up ("Manny, another one!") and turns to a reporter to decry the flaws in the California prison system before offering some culinary advice ("You've never had the eggs Benedict here? You gotta have the......m!").
Welcome to the world of Hollywood's toughest bad guy — or possibly its biggest social butterfly?
"I was doing radio interviews and all of them were asking me about my song," he says, referencing a track about him from Monterrey rock band Plastilina Mosh. "I'm like, 'Come on. I've gone from ex-con to icon.' "
Trejo adds a more substantial notch to his film résumé this weekend with "Machete," Robert Rodriguez's immigrant satire-cum-exploitation film. Here, for a change, the actor plays the title character and the hero, the Latino legend of the over-enunciated title ("Mach" as in "Macho," then the airless Spanish 'T,' then an "ete" that rhymes with "sensei"). A mythic, abstract force as much as full-blown character, Machete can pulverize baddies with little more than the flick of his wrist while making hotties like Michelle Rodriguez and Jessica Alba fall into bed with him with barely a head nod.
In a Texas racked by immigrant fears, Machete is framed for attempting to assassinate a political leader (De Niro), and then must exact revenge on those who set him up, all while his outlaw reputation provides hope to the embattled Latino population.
"It's an honor to be the first Latino superhero," says Trejo about a character Rodriguez conceived of more than 15 years ago and who began on-screen life as a fake trailer in "Grindhouse," the director's 2007 love letter to exploitation movies that he helmed with Quentin Tarantino. "And I didn't have to wear tights, and I didn't have a Daddy-hates-me complex," Trejo adds, bursting into laughter.
The 66-year-old's legend off screen is almost as rich as his new role. As a teenager and early twentysomething, he shuttled between prison and Southern California barrios. After he was blamed for a prison riot, he was sent to solitary, a period that inspired a dedication to boxing and to an alcohol- and drug-free life.
"I remember 10 or 15 years ago everyone talking about the millennium and being all worried. And I would say 'The millennium? I wasn't supposed to get out of the '60s.' "
In 1985, Trejo's life was working as a substance-abuse counselor spiritually far from Hollywood when he ended up getting counseling work on the set of Andrei Konchalovsky's "Runaway Train." Konchalovsky spotted him, liked his leathery face, and gave him a role. A quarter of a century later, the actor has starred in seemingly every third Hollywood action movie including "Heat," "Con Air" and numerous Robert Rodriguez films (in which his character is almost always named for a weapon). Trejo averages — averages — between 10 and 13 movies per year, often showing up on set for a few days, plying his villainous trade and leaving. He does that so often he frequently doesn't remember the film's director, or its title.
"Acting for me is like being a contractor or a plumber or a house painter. I don't distinguish what house I'm gonna paint. Just 'cuz ... Read more
