Danny Trejo has had an action-movie-worthy life each on-screen and off.
The prolific actor, 80, was out and in of jail earlier than his Hollywood profession. Throughout considered one of his stints behind bars, he crossed paths with Charles Manson, he stated.
“You have to understand, the Charles Manson that I met was not the Manson that you saw [in the news]. Because he was a little kid. He was like 5 foot 4 or 5 foot 6. He wasn’t this tough guy,” Trejo recalled whereas speaking to The Publish about his new Historical past Channel present, “Mysteries Unearthed With Danny Trejo” (premiering Friday, Dec. 6, at 10 p.m.).
Trejo, who has over 400 movie and TV credit to his title, is greatest recognized for “Machete,” “Spy Kids,” “Con Air,” and exhibits equivalent to “Breaking Bad” and “Sons of Anarchy.”
His Hollywood profession started within the ‘80s. Earlier than that, he spent the higher a part of 1956-1969 in California prisons equivalent to San Quentin and Folsom for crimes together with drug dealing and armed theft.
The “From Dusk Till Dawn” actor stated that he encountered Manson roughly round 1962 when the latter was in county jail for theft years earlier than the1969 homicide of Sharon Tate.
“When he showed up, we found out that he could hypnotize you,” Trejo defined, referring to his fellow inmates.
The “Heat” actor added, “[Manson] was in trouble with a lot of the inmates that didn’t like him. And we found out that he could hypnotize you … I said, ‘Get us loaded on marijuana.’ And so he did [hypnotize us into feeling like we were on marijuana],” he recalled.
Manson’s “family” cult was lively within the late Nineteen Sixties and early Seventies. Manson was in the end convicted in 1971 of first-degree homicide and conspiracy to commit homicide for the deaths of seven individuals, together with Tate.
Trejo stated a few decade after he crossed paths with Manson and noticed him making headlines for “all that stuff, ‘I was like, ‘How did this guy [do that]?’”
Trejo added that his impression of Manson — who died in jail in 2017 at age 83 — was not that he was a felony mastermind who would go on to turn into considered one of America’s most infamous killers.
“He was a twerp. He couldn’t have done that in Compton,” the actor stated.
