Simon Pegg

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

Simon John Pegg was born Simon John Beckingham on 14 February 1970 in Brockworth, Gloucestershire, the son of Gillian Rosemary (née Smith), a former civil servant, and John Henry Beckingham, a jazz musician and keyboard salesman.

His parents divorced when he was seven, and he took on his stepfather's surname "Pegg" after his mother remarried.

He graduated from the University of Bristol in 1991 with a BA in theatre, film, and television, titling his undergraduate thesis "A Marxist overview of popular 1970s cinema and hegemonic discourses".

While there, he performed as a member of a comedy troupe called "David Icke and the Orphans of Jesus", alongside David Walliams, Dominik Diamond, and Jason Bradbury.

"'When I graduated from university where I studied theater, film and television, I went into stand-up because comedy was something I enjoyed but also because it offered me a certain autonomy that I wouldn't have if I was sitting and waiting for the phone to ring as an actor. Then, I drifted into comedy acting through doing stand-up, and that was something that I really enjoyed. But, it wasn't the only thing I ever wanted to do. There was a time when I was younger where I just wanted to be at The Royal Shakespeare Theatre.'"

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.

He came to prominence in the UK as the co-creator of the Channel 4 sitcom Spaced (1999–2001), directed by Edgar Wright.

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.

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.

He and Wright co-wrote the films Shaun of the Dead (2004), Hot Fuzz (2007), and The World's End (2013), known collectively as the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, all of which saw Wright directing and Pegg starring alongside Nick Frost.

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 guest-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.

Pegg is one of the few performers to have achieved what Radio Times calls the "Holy Grail of Nerd-dom", having played popular supporting characters in Doctor Who (2005), Star Trek as Montgomery "Scotty" Scott (2009–2016), and Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015).

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 currently stars as Benji Dunn in the Mission: Impossible film series (2006–present), and he voiced Headmaster Phineas Nigellus Black in the computer game Hogwarts Legacy (2023).

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.

He provided the voice of Buck in Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009), Ice Age: Collision Course (2016), and The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild (2022).

Pegg and Frost also wrote and starred in the sci-fi comedy film Paul (2011).

He has reprised the role in four further Mission: Impossible sequel films: Ghost Protocol (2011), Rogue Nation (2015), Fallout (2018), and Dead Reckoning Part One (2023), and will appear in the upcoming eighth film in 2025.

His brother, Mike (who starred in the 2020 film The Host ), still uses Beckingham as his surname.

He attended Castle Hill Primary School, Brockworth Comprehensive Secondary School, and The King's School, Gloucester.

Pegg moved to Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire when he was 16 and studied English literature and theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon College.