Simon Pegg

MELENA RYZIK

The New York Times

“I THINK the reason actors become idiots is because you’re treated so well,” the British actor Simon Pegg said recently over multiple cups of coffee at a chic downtown hotel. “You’re driven everywhere, and you’re put up in really nice places. The actors that turn into idiots are the ones that start believing it’s because they deserve it, not because they’re just not trusted, which is the truth. The truth is actors are flaky, unreliable and mostly unstable people, and they need to be mollycoddled at all times.”
Mr. Pegg, the star and co-writer of the cult hits “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz,” is not the type to be mollycoddled. “I’m a very regular sort of person,” he said. Everyman is the description most often appended to his performances, and he likes to sell himself as down to earth, a genre junkie — a fanboy even — not too different from the legions of guys who go around quoting from his comedies and parroting them on YouTube.
His relationship with Nick Frost, his best friend and co-star in both films, was founded on a reference to an obscure “Star Wars” character. Edgar Wright, another close friend and the director and co-writer of the films, first wanted to work with Mr. Pegg because of his redneck jokes (or the British equivalent thereof). And he plays the titular somewhat schlubby loser in his new movie, “Run, Fat Boy, Run,” a romantic comedy directed by David Schwimmer that opens Friday.

But to watch the women flocking around him at a recent screening, it’s clear that Mr. Pegg is more than just geek material. For one thing, in real life, he’s a flab-free platinum blond who favors tight-fitting T-shirts and silver jewelry. (His wife is a music publicist.) For another, after years as a stand-up comedian, he still has ambitions that drive him to write, act and produce, sometimes simultaneously.
Now Mr. Pegg, 38, is moving into celebrity-treatment territory. His forthcoming roles include the lead, with Kirsten Dunst and Jeff Bridges, in “How to Lose Friends and Alienate People,” based on Toby Young’s memoir of working at Vanity Fair, and a turn as Scotty in J. J. Abrams’s new “Star Trek” movie, due out next year.
O.K., so he hasn’t left geekdom totally behind. But no matter. It’s the Judd Apatow era of the nerd hero: “ordinary blokes doing extraordinary things,” as Mr. Pegg says. In “Run, Fat Boy, Run” he plays Dennis, an underemployed scruffy charmer who runs from his pregnant fiancée (Thandie Newton) at the altar. She has the baby, and the story picks up again several years later, when she is dating the perfect man (Hank Azaria as a rich, ripped marathon runner). To win back her affection and the respect of his son, Mr. Pegg’s character decides to compete against the boyfriend in a race. Cue the hilarious training sequence.
The first feature directed by Mr. Schwimmer, it is a triple threat of feel-good genres: first-date movie, broad physical comedy and underdog sports flick. Michael Ian Black, the comedian and veteran of the television shows “The State” and “Stella,” wrote the original screenplay, and Mr. Pegg did rewrites to transfer the story to London from New York.
It’s nothing like “Shaun of the Dead,” a zombie satire, or “Hot Fuzz,” a sendup of police action movies, and that was the point. “It’s broader than what I’ve done before, it’s more conventional,” Mr. Pegg said. “But I think it ticks a lot of boxes in terms of a popcorn movie, a Saturday night film to go and just genuinely enjoy it as entertainment.”
Mr. Schwimmer had been attached to the project for years, considering various schlubby-yet-serious types — like Paul Giamatti and Philip Seymour Hoffman — to star. Nonetheless the American financing fell through; the script was eventually picked up by a British company.
“Once I was suddenly the director of a British comedy, Simon was a natural first choice,” said Mr. Schwimmer, who worked with him on HBO’s “Band of Brothers.”
That Mr. Pegg was in good shape — he was coming off his role as the stickler supercop in “Hot Fuzz,” for which he lost nearly 30 pounds — gave both director and star some pause, but in the end there was neither the time nor the desire (on Mr. Pegg’s part) to get fat, or change the title. Though Mr. Pegg wore some padding, he and Mr. Schwimmer thought of Dennis as being more slothful of character than body.
Mr. Schwimmer let the cast improvise some lines (a gross-out scene involving the explosive popping of a giant blister elicited, “But I’m Catholic!” from Mr. Pegg), but also hoped to keep the movie balanced toward sentiment. He compared Mr. Pegg to Jack Lemmon in his versatility. “He has this very natural, real, relatable quality,” Mr. Schwimmer said. “Men, when they watch him, they’re like, ‘He’d be a great mate.’ And women just want to take care of him.”
Mr. Pegg, who grew up in Gloucester, England, began doing stand-up as a student at the University of Bristol, where he studied film. In his early routines he took his pet goldfish onstage and read poems about being in love with Diane Keaton in the fish’s voice. (In college he wrote a paper in his own voice about the poetic structure of “Annie Hall.”) In the early 1990s he met Mr. Frost at a Mexican restaurant in London where Mr. Frost and Mr. Pegg’s girlfriend at the time were both waiting tables.
At dinner a week after they met, Mr. Pegg, who was soused, “made the noise of a little droid in ‘Star Wars,’ ” Mr. Frost recalled. “It was such a little specific thing, and I’d never heard anyone else do that before. It was like he was talking my language. We both understood each other perfectly.” They eventually parlayed their knowledge of pop culture ephemera into bull’s-eye parodies.
When they met, Mr. Pegg was performing as a comedian, and he pulled Mr. Frost along. They were roommates for eight years; through a series of buddy-flick-worthy mishaps they even wound up (platonically) sharing a bed for months. “There was never any impropriety,” Mr. Frost said, “but it just felt nice.”
In 1999 they began working on “Spaced,” a British television series in which they played best friends. (Mr. Wright was the director.) Then came “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz.” Their next project, tentatively titled “Paul,” is about a pair of geeky British friends (naturally) who travel to a comic-book convention on the West Coast; unlike their other films, this one has Mr. Frost as the dominant one and Mr. Pegg as the sidekick.
Despite his increasing star appeal (he also appeared in “Mission: Impossible III” in 2006) and his preference for acting, Mr. Pegg says he does not plan to abandon writing; he and Mr. Frost just got a spiffy new office in London and, for the first time, an assistant. “I always know that I’m going to self-generate,” Mr. Pegg said. “I kind of trust myself more than everybody else.”
He paused, catching himself in an actor moment. “End of the really massively egotistical statement,” he said, and laughed.
The New York Times, 22 Marzo 2008

PRESSBOOK

Vincitore del Peter Sellers Award (consegnato dal London Evening Standard), vanta una lunga serie di successi televisivi e cinematografici, l’ultimo dei quali è l’ideazione della sitcom di straordinario successo per Channel 4 Spaced, candidata ai British Comedy Award, ai BAFTA del Regno Unito e internazionali, nonché agli International Emmy Award .
Pegg ha ottenuto un notevole successo di pubblico e di critica per L’alba dei morti dementi (Shaun of the Dead), suo debutto cinematografico, scritto insieme a Edgar Wright, di cui è protagonista .

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