British actor, comedian, and screenwriter having achieved what RadioTimes refer to as the “Holy Grail of Nerd-dom,” Pegg is best known as the co-creator of Spaced. He also wrote Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End – the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy. He has also played supporting characters in series and movies like Doctor Who, Star Trek, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Mission Impossible, and The Dark Age.
Most popularly, he voiced the character of Buck in Ice Age.
He co-wrote the Channel 4 sitcom Spaced with Jessica Stevenson in 1999. The tv show was directed by Edgar Wright, with whom Pegg and Stevenson had earlier collaborated on Asylum, and Pegg specifically created the character of Mike Watt for his friend Nick Frost.
Pegg was shortlisted for a British Comedy Award for Best Male Comedy Newcomer for his acting skills in this series. The experience of creating a Spaced fantasy sequence involving zombies headed to Pegg and Wright co-writing the “romantic zombie comedy” film Shaun of the Dead, which was released in April 2004 and starred Pegg.
In a series of Big Finish Productions audio plays based on the British comic 2000 AD, he played mutant bounty hunter Johnny Alpha, the Strontium Dog. Pegg also appeared as Don Chaney in Big Finish Productions Doctor Who audio story Invaders From Mars and as the Editor in the 2005 episode “The Long Game” of the Doctor Who television series. He also narrated the first season of Doctor Who Confidential, a “making-of” documentary series. He was set to play Rose Tyler’s father during the first sequence of Doctor Who (2005), but due to a scheduling conflict, he instead played The Editor in another episode.
Pegg starred as engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott in Star Trek, the eleventh installment in the Star Trek film series, which was released on May 8, 2009. He returned to the role in Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) and Star Trek Beyond (2016), which he also co-wrote.
In 2010, he played William Burke in John Landis’ film Burke & Hare, about two Ulstermen who were infamous murderers and bodysnatchers in early nineteenth-century Edinburgh. While his similarity was used for the character of Wee Hughie in the comic book series The Boys without his permission, he became a fan of the comic and even authored the intro to the first bound volume. In The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, he played Reepicheep, the heroic mouse.
Pegg’s real-life best friend and former roommate are Nick Frost, who co-stars with him in Hot Fuzz (2007), Spaced (1999), and Shaun of the Dead (2004). Frost had no formal acting training before co-starring in Spaced (1999), but he is now a household name in the United Kingdom.
Pegg is also good friends with Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin, and he appears in the music video for Coldplay’s single “Christmas Lights” as a violin-playing Elvis impersonator. Pegg is the godfather of Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow’s daughter Apple, along with Jonny Buckland. Martin, in turn, is the godfather to Pegg’s daughter.
The University of Bristol awarded him a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theatre, Film, and Television (1991).
Pegg is a massive Star Wars fan, and his work frequently references the saga. Besides the numerous visual references to Star Wars (1977) in Shaun of the Dead (2004), his roommate, Pete, is played by Darth Maul’s voice actor, Peter Serafinowicz.
He was cast as Rorschach in the ill-fated film adaptation of the comic book miniseries “The Watchmen.” But declined because it would be too “Simon Pegg *is* Rorschach.”
He even tried out for the part of Rufus in the romantic drama ‘Love Actually’
He has sectoral heterochromia, which means his eyes are grey-blue with a noticeable brown spot on his right iris.
Poltergeist is one of his favorite horror films (1982). Steven Spielberg, who produced the film, made a brief cameo appearance in Simon Pegg’s science-fiction comedy Paul (2011). Spielberg admired Pegg’s horror-comedy Shaun of the Dead (2004). Later, in The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, Spielberg even cast Pegg and Shaun co-star Nick Frost as the Thompson twins (2011).
