Simon Pegg

At 54 years old, Simon Pegg has this physical status:

Simon John Pegg (né Beckingham; born 14 February 1970) is an English actor, comedian, screenwriter, and producer.

He came to public prominence in the United Kingdom as the co-creator of the Channel 4 sitcom Spaced, directed by Edgar Wright.

He went on to co-write and appear in the Three Flavours Corro film trilogy: Shaun of the Dead (2004), Hot Fuzz (2007), and The World's End (2013).

Paul (2011) was written and starred by He and Nick Frost in the sci-fi film Paul. Pegg is one of the few performers to have achieved science-fiction's "holy trinity," he appears in Doctor Who (2004), Star Trek as Montgomery "Scotty" Scott (2009-present), and Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015).

Benji Dunn appears in Mission: Impossible film series (2006–present) and the Chamberlain in The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (2019).

Early life

Simon John Beckingham was born in Brockworth, Gloucestershire, on February 14th, the son of Gillian Rosemary (née Smith), a former civil servant, and John Henry Beckingham, a jazz musician and keyboard salesman. He and his parents divorced when he was seven, and after his mother's divorced, he adopted the surname "Pegg" instead. He attended Castle Hill Primary School, Brockworth Comprehensive Secondary School, and The King's School, Gloucester.

Pegg studied English literature and theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon College when he was 16 and moved to Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. In 1991, he graduated from the University of Bristol with a BA in Theatre, Film, and Television, titling his undergraduate dissertation "A Marxist study of popular 1970s cinema and hegemonic discourses." "David Icke and the Orphanages of Jesus" as a member of a comedy troupe called "David Icke and the Orphans of Jesus" performed by David Walliams, Dominik Diamond, and Jason Bradbury.

Personal life

Pegg is an atheist. On July 23, 2005, he married Maureen McCann, a long-time girlfriend, in Glasgow. They live in Essendon, Hertfordshire. Nick Frost was the best man at his wedding. Matilda (born 2009) and the couple have one child together.

In the video for Coldplay's 2010 single "Christmas Lights," Pegg appears as a close friend of Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin. Pegg, alongside Jonny Buckland, is Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow's daughter Apple. Martin is the godfather to Pegg's daughter in return. Pegg said in a video interview with British GQ magazine in July 2018, that his daughter sang backing vocals for Coldplay onstage at Glastonbury Festival. Joe Pegg, the son of actor and colleague Martin Freeman, is also a godfather to Joe. Pegg's parents and sister spent a brief period of space, while his mother appeared in both Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

Pegg spoke to The Guardian in July 2018 about his fight against depression and alcoholism, as well as how recovery helped him recover from the former. "I can see where I was when I watched Mission: Impossible III, which was surprisingly lost and distraught, and an addict," he said. "I'm not ashamed of what happened." I believe if anyone has a connection to it, it might help them to be healthier. However, I am not proud of it — I don't think it's cool, like I was Mr. Rock 'n' Roll, blackout, and all that shit. It wasn't that bad, it was just horrible." Pegg was taken into a hospital shortly after the release of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. Some journalists went so far as to say that the clinic was pretending to be Pegg's mother, claiming to be Pegg's mother. Pegg attended Alcoholic Anonymous meetings and has been sober since.

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Career

Pegg's early appearances in TV series and films include Six Pairs of Pants (Meridian & Anglia, 1995), Asylum, Faith in the Future, Big Train and Hippies. Between 1998 and 2004, Pegg was regularly featured on BBC Radio 4's The 99p Challenge. Pegg's other credits include appearances in the World War II mini-series Band of Brothers; the television comedies Black Books, Brass Eye and I'm Alan Partridge; and the films The Parole Officer, 24 Hour Party People, and Guest House Paradiso. He played various roles during the tour of Steve Coogan's 1998 live stage show The Man Who Thinks He's It.

In 1999, he created and co-wrote the Channel 4 sitcom Spaced with Jessica Stevenson. The series was directed by Edgar Wright, with whom Pegg and Stevenson had previously worked on Asylum, and Pegg wrote the character of Mike Watt specifically for his friend Nick Frost. For his performance in this series, Pegg was nominated for a British Comedy Award as Best Male Comedy Newcomer. The experience of making a Spaced fantasy sequence featuring zombies led to Pegg and Wright co-writing the "romantic zombie comedy" film Shaun of the Dead, released in April 2004, in which Pegg also starred. At George A. Romero's invitation, Pegg and Wright made cameo appearances in Romero's zombie film, Land of the Dead. In 2004, Pegg starred in a spin-off of the television show Danger! 50,000 Volts! called Danger! 50,000 Zombies!, in which he played a zombie hunter named Dr. Fell.

He played mutant bounty hunter Johnny Alpha, the Strontium Dog, in a series of Big Finish Productions audio plays based on the character from British comic 2000 AD. Pegg also appeared in Big Finish Productions' Doctor Who audio story Invaders From Mars as Don Chaney, and appeared in the Doctor Who television series, playing the Editor in the 2005 episode "The Long Game". He also narrated the first series of the "making-of" documentary series Doctor Who Confidential.

Upon completion of Shaun of the Dead, Pegg was questioned as to whether he would be abandoning the British film industry for Hollywood, and he replied, "It's not like we're going to go away and do, I don't know, Mission: Impossible III", picking the title of an imaginary blockbuster. When the film Mission: Impossible III was subsequently made, Pegg appeared in it as Benji Dunn, an IMF technician who assists Tom Cruise's character Ethan Hunt. He reprised the role in three further Mission: Impossible sequel films: Ghost Protocol (2011), Rogue Nation (2015), and Fallout (2018).

In 2006, he played Gus in Big Nothing alongside David Schwimmer. The same year, Pegg and Wright completed their second film, Hot Fuzz, released in February 2007. The film is a police-action movie homage and also stars Nick Frost, in which Pegg plays Nicholas Angel, a London policeman transferred to rural Sandford, a fictional village where grisly events take place. In 2007, Pegg starred in The Good Night (directed by Jake Paltrow) and Run Fatboy Run directed by David Schwimmer and co-starring Thandie Newton and Hank Azaria. In 2008, he wrote the dialogue for an English language re-release of the cult 2006 animated Norwegian film, Free Jimmy. Pegg received screenwriting credit for this, and also voiced one of the main characters in the English-language version, which has an international range of actors including Woody Harrelson.

Pegg co-wrote the script for a film called Paul, about two young men who encounter a comedic extraterrestrial alien during a road trip across the US. The completed script appeared on the 2008 "Brit List", a film-industry-compiled survey of the best unproduced British screenplays, inspired by the American Black List. In those films and in Spaced, Pegg typically plays the leading hero while Frost plays the sidekick. However Paul reverses this dynamic. The film was released in 2011.

Pegg played engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in Star Trek, the eleventh film in the Star Trek film series, released 8 May 2009. He reprised the role in Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) and Star Trek Beyond (2016), also co-writing the latter. In 2010 he appeared as William Burke in Burke & Hare, a film directed by John Landis about two Ulstermen who were notorious murderers and bodysnatchers in early 19th-century Edinburgh. His likeness was also used for the character of Wee Hughie in the comic book series The Boys; while this was done without Pegg's permission, he quickly became a fan of the title, and even wrote the introduction to the first bound volume. He voiced Reepicheep, the heroic mouse in Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Pegg and Wright completed the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy (the first two films being Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz) with their 2013 film The World's End. In July 2014, Pegg appeared on stage with Monty Python during their live show Monty Python Live (Mostly) held at the O2 Arena, London. He was the special guest in their "Blackmail" sketch. In 2015 he appeared in Star Wars: The Force Awakens as Unkar Plutt, the Junkyard dealer on Jakku.

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