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The Food Programme: Danny Trejo: A Life Through Food

31/05/2024

Danny Trejo: A Life Through Food

BBC Radio 4 - The Food Programme, Danny Trejo: A Life Through Food

Jaega Wise meets Hollywood actor Danny Trejo to talk family, prison, addiction and tacos.

Danny Trejo is a Hollywood legend appearing in hundreds of films mostly playing tough guys, convicts and henchmen. He has starred in some of the greatest action films of all time like Con Air with John Malkovich and Nicolas Cage and Heat with Robert De Nero and Al Pacino. 

Life wasn’t easy for Danny growing up. He started taking hard drugs and committing serious crimes from a very young age. He ended up in some of the most violent prisons in America but through finding God and sobriety turned his life around. He became a drugs counsellor and through a series of unlikely events worked his way into Hollywood as an actor.

At 80 he is also the owner of a chain of taco restaurants as well as a number of food and drink brands. In the programme Jaega meets him in the last branch of Trejo’s Tacos and talks to him about his memories of food growing up, brewing hooch in prison and filming Old El Paso adverts in Mexico.

We also hear from food historian and writer Chloe-Rose Crabtree about why eating tacos in London has become a thorny issue for Americans and BBC entertainment reporter Colin Paterson on the history of celebrity restaurants.

Presented by Jaega Wise

Produced by Sam Grist for BBC Audio in Bristol

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