Danny Trejo visits Austin and explains why he works and works and works.

“A sweetheart in person, Trejo is all but typecast as villains, psychopaths and killers. His gangsta appearance ”” bandito mustache, nine tattoos, a face that’s a lunar-surface of crags and pocks ”” helps, but his is not a crafted persona. Before movies, Trejo, 62, spent 11 years in San Quentin and Folsom prisons for armed robbery and drug charges. That’s where most of his tattoos were done, with needle and thread. In San Quentin, he was a welter-weight boxing champion.

The veteran drug counselor stumbled into pictures. He has upward of 130 films to his credit, including seven by his distant cousin Robert Rodriguez. Trejo plays a rogue’s gallery of scary dudes in “Desperado,” “From Dusk Till Dawn,” “Once Upon a Time in Mexico,” “Grindhouse” and the upcoming “Sin City 2.” In the “Spy Kids” trilogy, he plays Uncle Machete, who’s inspired a crazy vigilante character named Machete in “Grindhouse.” Circulating on the Web, the clip of Trejo’s wild man is such a hit ”” “Everybody is screaming about it,” he says ”” that Rodriguez might make an entire movie based on him.”

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