Danny Trejo Has the Most On-Screen Deaths of Any Actor

Filmmakers and audiences apparently love to watch Danny Trejo shuffle his way off this mortal coil, because the popular TV and movie actor has now died 65 times in films. And not only does that make Trejo far more prone to die than Sean Bean (who’s done a good bit of dying in his career as well), but also the actor with the most on-screen deaths ever.

Columbia Pictures

Bloody Disgusting reported on Trejo’s new title as biggest “magnet for on-screen deaths,” which was awarded by the website, Movie Mortality. If you haven’t heard of Movie Mortality, that makes perfect sense—it’s apparently owned and run by a chain of bingo clubs in Great Britain, and there’s essentially no information given as to why the bingo club chain, Buzz Bingo, would bother to put together these cinematic stats. But Movie Mortality does provide sources, and the list was reported by IMDb, which gives it more validity. Plus, Trejo does die a lot on screen.

In regards to sources, Movie Mortality used data collected from Cinemorgue, a wiki that keeps “an index of ‘who died in what movie or show'” to figure out the death count of 1,500 of “the world’s top actors.” The list of actors was taken from these two IMDb lists.

It’s hard to say it’s surprising that Trejo is number one on this list, but he still doesn’t seem like he’d be a common first guess. Yes, we’ve seen Trejo get stabbed through the chest with a stake in From Dusk Till Dawn, mutilated and killed in a plane crash in Con Air, and decapitated and turned into a tortoise hat in Breaking Bad—OK, yes, that was TV, but still a very memorable on-screen death for the actor—but there are still plenty of other actors who seem like their countdown-to-death clock starts as soon as they step on screen. (Looking at you, Gary Oldman.)

Movie Mortality, for whatever reason, also figured out which actor is most likely to die on screen—a title that, shockingly, goes to Kit Harington—as well as the annual cinematic-death-count total based on the top 50 highest-grossing films from each year between 1980 and 2018. Those who loved ’90s action flicks like Face/Off are probably not surprised to hear that ’97 was the “deadliest” in that 1980-2018 timeframe. Although to be fair, Titanic also came out that year.

A clip of Trejo’s on-screen death in Desperado. 

If you’re wondering why there’s no discussion of any women’s names here, that’s because they’re much less likely to die on screen. Out of all the on-screen deaths Movie Mortality included in its research, 75.9% befell male actors versus 24.1% for female actors. Male deaths seem to far outstrip female deaths in films in most, if not all, years from 1980 until 2018, and also, consequently, have a much higher chance of dying on screen in general. When it comes to female actors, Shelley Winters has the most deaths at 20 across her whole career.

What do you think about Danny Trejo’s new position as actor with the most on-screen movie deaths? Are you shocked to hear that this list of most-killed movie stars isn’t just one big, pixelated picture of Sean Bean? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

Feature image: 20th Century Fox