Simon Pegg Reveals How Star Trek And Star Wars Keep Him Going
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We all need a pick-me-up every now and then, and Simon Pegg is no different. In an interview last year, Pegg admitted things aren’t always smiles and laughter in his life, and when things are looking down, he uses a strategy that shouldn’t be that surprising. To help pick himself back up, Pegg reminds himself that he’s been an integral part of the histories of not one, but two iconic fictional spaceships — the Millennium Falcon of Star Wars, and Star Trek‘s Enterprise.
Speaking to Audible UK, Simon Pegg admitted when he needs some help in his real life, he remembers what he’s accomplished in his fictional lives. “I did own the Millennium Falcon,” Pegg said, referring to how his character Unkar Plott claimed the ship before it was stolen by Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Finn (John Boyega) in 2015’s The Force Awakens. And starting with 2009’s Star Trek, which gave birth to the Kelvin Timeline, Pegg became the late James Doohan’s successor as Starfleet’s Montgomery Scott. Fittingly, Pegg mused, “I often think to myself, when I need a little bit of an attaboy, I think, ‘You have owned the Millennium Falcon. And you have been the engineer on the Starship Enterprise. That’s the two most famous spaceships and you are part of them.'” You can watch the interview below.
As Cinema Blend points out, Star Trek and Star Wars don’t even mark the end of the hugely successful franchises Simon Pegg’s career have allowed him to join. He voices the unhinged weasel Buck in Disney’s Ice Age films, Chamberlan SkekSil in The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, and even lent his voice to 2018’s The Cloverfield Paradox. Doubtlessly the most visible and still active franchise Pegg has become an integral part of, however, is Tom Cruise’s ongoing Mission: Impossible film series.
Simon Pegg’s recent comments seem to come as a welcome shift in the actor’s outlook. In 2018, Pegg told the Guardian that he almost lost everything because of battles with depression which led him to, among other things, abusing alcohol. He said it started to become clear his life was coming apart at the seams during the filming of 2006’s Mission: Impossible III. “When I watch that film back,” Pegg recalled, “I can see where I was then, which was fairly lost, and unhappy, and an alcoholic.”
Thankfully Simon Pegg says through rehab and other means, he was able to turn things around. But he points to the lack of satisfaction he received from his work specifically as something that was a sign of how his outlook needed to change. He told the Guardian, “I would feel like – I’m in a film with Tom Cruise, I’ve got the part of Scotty in Star Trek. This should be making me feel happy. But it wasn’t.”
Simon Pegg has become something of a nerd icon, having gained his first glut of notoriety as the lead of Spaced in which he played an aspiring comic book artist known for — among other things — berating a young boy for wanting to buy a Jar Jar Binks action figure. The series also marked Pegg’s first on-screen collaboration with his real life friend Nick Frost. Pegg and Frost would go on to make fans laugh in many more projects including Edgar Wright’s Cornetto trilogy — 2004’s Shaun of the Dead, 2007’s Hot Fuzz, and 2013’s The World’s End — and the 2011 sci-fi comedy Paul. His next live-action film, Mission: Impossible 7 is due out September 30.
