Actor Danny Trejo has a brand new memoir available in multiple formats which details his life from his early days as a drug addict and criminal to becoming a beloved on-screen artist.
Within the pages, the 77-year-old Machete, Heat, and Spy Kids star, speaks of his meeting the infamous Charles Manson in 1961 while they were both in lock-up at the L.A. County Jail, years before Manson was implicated in the brutal Sharon Tate murders.
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Describing him as "greasy, dirty, scrawny," Trejo says Manson was “so poor, he didn’t have a belt, and instead used a piece of string to keep his pants up.” An appearance he says made him feel sorry at the time for the criminal and cult leader. Days later, Trejo says Manson told him that he had hypnotic powers and "could get us high... it was like a guided meditation."
Appealing to the user in him and a group of fellow inmates, Manson first made Trejo and others believe they were on high on heroin. “By the time he described it hitting my bloodstream, I felt the warmth flowing through my body,” Trejo says of the experience. "If that white boy wasn’t a career criminal," he added, "he could have been a professional hypnotist."
Manson, meditating. Likely not anyone's first choice as a spiritual guide, but 'when in Rome,' right? Danny Trejo's brand new memoir Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood is available in bookstores, digitally, and on audiobook now.
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