How Danny Trejo’s Love of History Turned Him Into an Accidental Explorer

Perhaps best known for his tough-guy image in the Machete and From Dusk Till Dawn franchises, Danny Trejo’s story is one of redemption. Drug and robbery offenses landed him in prison at a young age, but he cleaned up, worked hard and turned his life around. A tireless worker, Trejo loves to laugh, as we discovered when he shared how his lifelong fascination with history and geography, his love of Star Trek, and other events led him to host The HISTORY® Channel’s Mysteries Unearthed with Danny Trejo, starting its second season on November 11.

Well, first of all, William Shatner [host of HISTORY’s show The UnXplained] has been a hero of mine. We go “where no one's ever been,” you know. Star Trek was the program to watch—I've been watching for years. And history was the only thing I ever got a good grade in because [my teacher] Mrs. Finley used to make history so much fun. It's like with history you could tell the future, you know? It's just one of my favorite things ever, finding stuff that was buried for hundreds of thousands of years….I love the way this is like accidental history. It's like finding treasure.

The ship that they found in New York when they were building another building [Season 1, Episode 1]. The lady digging in her garden, and all of a sudden, they find a Roman temple. It goes on and on. History is so tied in with geography, you know, and those are my two favorite subjects—just knowing about the past.

The projects kind of choose me. [My agent] will give me two or three and say, “I think this one's the best.” I learned to listen to her. She wanted me to do this movie with, like, no budget…but she said, “I think this will be really good.” I was waiting for something with a lot more money, but she [convinced me] and I did this low-budget movie called Bad Ass, and it turned into a trilogy. I made more money than I've ever made in a single film. On it, I met one of the producers, Ash Shah, who had been in the restaurant business. He saw that I eat good food—I don't eat too much processed food—and said, “Danny, why don't you open a restaurant?” I said jokingly, “Trejo’s Tacos.” On the third film that we did, he brought me a business plan. [My manager] said, “This is a no-brainer, Danny.” So, I said, “Okay, let's do it.” Right now, we have five restaurants….So my life's been kind of guided. I've had good people around me, and that's what makes you. If you have bad people around you, you end up in prison, like I did.

I can remember when I was little and we would go searching in old, ruined houses, and we would find these paintings and stuff and wouldn't even care about them. And yet, some guy found a painting that was hanging on a family’s wall for years, and ended up it was a Rembrandt or something! Stuff like that is amazing to me. It’s just the luck of the draw.

Everything good that has happened to me has happened as a direct result of helping someone else. Everything. I mean, I started a gardening business by helping this lady who was in my neighborhood. When I went to prison she had this gorgeous yard. She had two sons and her husband. And when I got out of prison, like five years later, her yard was just a jungle. I asked my mom what happened. Well, one of her sons died in Vietnam, another one was killed in a gang war and her husband committed suicide. To the kids, she kind of turned into the witch lady—la bruja.

So me and [another] guy named Danny just started working on the yard. We didn't even have a lawn mower. I had a ‘59 Chevy Impala, and we used to throw all the trash in the trunk and go dump it. We got it looking a little nicer, but not the way it used to be. This guy came over while we were working on it, and he says, “Hey, how much are you charging her?” And I said, “Nothing.” So, he said, “Well, come on. I want you to do my yard.” We went over, and he told us what he wanted to do and when he opened his garage, he said, “I'll give you this equipment if you do my yard for free.” It was everything a gardener needed—edgers, everything. And he says, “I love working on the yard, but my wife won’t let me because I had a heart attack.” We got so much equipment, we went and bought a truck—the Chevy wouldn't work no more, you know—and we actually had a real gardening business. I got into the film business the same way. It just seems like the more you do good, you get repaid. It might not be right now, but it'll pay.

We rest when we die. It's funny, my mom used to say, “You would get up at 2:30 in the morning and start doing stuff in your room.” I don't know, I feel sleep is really overrated.

[The show premieres] Thursday, November 11. I love it. I get to be on the same channel as William Shatner. If I ever had a hero, it was William Shatner. “We're going into space, Scotty!”