Simon Pegg: ‘I was lost, unhappy and an alcoholic’
Simon Pegg has brought a bit of Hollywood with him. Not just the shades and a shiny smile, but the scorching weather, too. This setting seems apt. Pegg is here to promote his latest outing in the Mission: Impossible franchise, and – because this is the start of his promotional campaign and because he adores the fact he gets to star in Mission: Impossible films alongside Tom Cruise – he is raring to go.
“You have caught me at the best possible moment,” he says, shaking my hand and downing a coffee. “This will be the most enthusiastic, positive and interesting I will ever be. You have got the mother lode!”
And then he sits down to talk about depression. And alcoholism. And how he spent years trying to hide it, and how he nearly lost everything, and how he is lucky to even be alive. “It was awful, terrible,” he says. “It owned me.” Suddenly, this roof terrace in east London doesn’t seem so sunny.
The narrative with Pegg has always been a heartwarming one: young sci-fi geek turns his obsession into a comedy career, writes a brilliant sitcom () and a fun comedy zombie film (), before somehow ending up starring in the same kind of space adventure blockbusters he grew up with. His rise is often portrayed like a film script, as if he didn’t so much work his way up to a career as found it tucked
