While working on Mission: Impossible – Fallout, the sixth instalment of the impossibly successful secret agent series, British actor Simon Pegg completed a personal mission of his own: sculpted stomach muscles.
His punishing physical workout reportedly earned him the nickname ‘Six-Pack Pegg’ from his gym partner, the producer and kingpin of the £2.1 billion grossing franchise, some guy called Tom Cruise.
‘We train together a lot of the time,’ a well-toned Pegg confirms coyly. ‘And yes, Tom called me Six-Pack Pegg. He thought it was funny. I didn’t mind. At 48, I was quite pleased that I was able to locate my abs again.’
Simon Pegg’s reckless days are behind him. He stopped drinking in 2010, having ‘hit a low with alcohol’, and now avoids boozy occasions
Since achieving cult fame as an actor/screenwriter in the Noughties with off-beat hits including Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz, Pegg’s name has stealthily become synonymous with big box-office business and earned him a reputation as Hollywood’s hottest geek.
Appearances in Star Trek: Beyond (which he also co-wrote), Star Wars: The Force Awakens and as Benji Dunn in four of the Mission: Impossible movies have made him a film-maker’s favourite and a confidante of major players like Cruise.
The ‘nerd do well’ Brit and the American movie deity have become firm friends and, as a good mate should be, Pegg is defensive about the rumours that surround Cruise, regarding the superstar’s Scientology beliefs and lifestyle.
‘He is the subject of so much speculation and conjecture,’ Pegg sighs from behind tan aviator sunglasses. ‘And he just lets it go. People have these opinions about him, which are based entirely on gossip and he doesn’t really do anything to combat that. When I hear people speculating about his weird religion and making assumptions about who he is as a person, I say, “You know he risks his life for his audience?”’
This isn’t a hollow Hollywood boast. All the stunts for Mission: Impossible – Fallout are real. No CGI, no trickery, no kidding. ‘Tom’s 100 per cent driven,’ Pegg asserts. ‘He commits 100 per cent. He is doing those stunts, flying those helicopters, making those jumps.
‘In order to provide any kind of authenticity in an era when you can create anything with CGI, to really get to the audience now emotionally, you have to be authentic and that might require actually risking your life, which he does.’ Pegg pauses. ‘It blows my mind.’
It also broke Cruise’s ankle. During filming in August 2017, while executing a heart-stopping leap between two buildings, Cruise smashed the bone, yet stumbled on to the end of the scene. ‘Knowing how much the break was going to cost the movie, he carried on,’ Pegg says. ‘Tom limped out of shot on, essentially, a liquid ankle.
‘We thought we’d have to shut down for six months because it was such a profound break but he recovered in three. He was sprinting around London again within 12 weeks.’
As producer, Cruise likes to lay on morale-boosting entertainment for the cast and crew. Morocco was group zip-lining. In Dubai, he hired out a go-karting track for the evening.
‘Tom was obviously in the lead the whole time,’ Pegg reports. ‘His name on the board was Cole Trickle, his character from Days Of Thunder. Who was I? Simon Pegg.’
You wonder what thrusting, clear-eyed Cruise sees in Pegg, who despite some dazzling Tinseltown teeth has something of the eternal film-studies student about him.
‘He is the subject of so much speculation and conjecture,’ Pegg says of his co-star Tom Cruise
When I hear people speculating about his weird religion and making assumptions about who he is as a person, I say, “You know he risks his life for his audience?”’
‘Tom’s 100 per cent driven,’ Pegg asserts. ‘He commits 100 per cent. He is doing those stunts, flying those helicopters, making those jumps’
‘He likes me because I make him laugh,’ Pegg decides, sipping mineral water, perched poolside on the roof of a swanky Shoreditch hotel. ‘I’ll pull him up on stuff and I can be frank with him. But he’s still Tom Cruise. When you’re on set, he’s the boss. I’ve never seen him just be a p****. If he’s in a darker mood, there’s usually a reason for it. When his ankle was hurting and he was running on it a lot, he was quieter and a little bit more spiky, but normally we’re laughing a lot.’
Pegg confesses to concerns that, in the pursuit of gut-wrenching entertainment, Cruise could one day come a proper cropper. ‘I remember on a couple of occasions, prior to a really big stunt, that conversation of, “I’ll see you then, good luck.”’
He gulps his water.
‘When me and Rebecca [Ferguson – Isla Faust in the Mission Impossible films] left New Zealand this time last year, Tom was staying behind to do the aerial footage [where Cruise would effectively bungee jump from a helicopter at 2,000ft] and there was a genuine wobbly-chin moment. “Maybe see you in London.” It was weird. I don’t think for a second I could ever persuade him not to do something. But he’s so careful, he’d never say, “F*** it, I don’t need a harness”. He isn’t ever reckless.
‘Tom’s possibly the last true movie star in existence. I don’t think there is another film star like him.’
In all the time he has spent with him – on location, at dinner, in the locker room – what has Pegg learned from Cruise? ‘Don’t jump off buildings,’ he deadpans.
Pegg enjoys sobriety in rural Hertfordshire with his wife of 13 years, Maureen, and their only child Tilly, nine, who is ‘clever and joyously funny’
Pegg is godfather to Apple, Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin of Coldplay’s 14-year old daughter
Pegg’s reckless days are behind him. He stopped drinking in 2010, having ‘hit a low with alcohol’, and now avoids boozy occasions. He prefers to stay in and watch TV or play the videogames Minecraft and Fortnite. ‘I can totally see how it could become an addiction’, he observes. ‘I just don’t go out any more. I love not having the pressure of being in a noisy crowded room making small talk with people chasing the first hour of the night. If you go out with your friends and they’re drinking, at about ten o’clock, you lose them all,’ he says sadly. ‘They all turn into d****. I get that even with the people I love most in the world.
‘I don’t think I was ever an angry drunk or anything, just a drunk drunk,’ he says. ‘I was in terribly poor health. I look back at the films I made at that time and I’m really bloated and unhappy. There are certain films of mine that I can’t watch now because I remember where I was at that point and it wasn’t a great place. I only associate my drinking with bad things so I don’t have any yearning for it. I don’t miss it. It’s been the best eight years of my life.’ Pegg enjoys sobriety in rural Hertfordshire with his wife of 13 years, Maureen, and their only child Tilly, nine, who is ‘clever and joyously funny’. Having experienced showbusiness in extreme close-up, would he ever put his daughter on the stage?
‘Mrs Worthington?’ he quips. ‘She played Mary in the school nativity play and as a screaming atheist I did take some pleasure in watching her bang baby Jesus’s head against the stage in time to the music.’
Pegg with Henry Cavill in Mission: Impossible – Fallout; In 2016, Pegg conquered another mountain: having amassed five million followers, he quit Twitter. ‘I didn’t really like the way I was on it,’ he says
Pegg is godfather to Apple, Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin of Coldplay’s 14-year old daughter. By return, Martin is Tilly’s godfather, although neither is entirely sure what modern godparenting duties entail. ‘I send her presents?’ Pegg squints. ‘I don’t see her as much I’d like to because they live LA so when I go over, I see her. Chris is better at it. He sends her little video messages.
‘The most amazing thing was at the last Glastonbury that Coldplay did, he got Tilly and Apple and Moses [Paltrow and Martin’s son] up on stage to sing backing vocals on a song.
‘So, her first Glastonbury, at the age of six, she headlines on the Main Stage. My biggest achievement when I went to Glastonbury for the first time, back in 1987, was not having a poo for three days.’
In 2016, Pegg conquered another mountain: having amassed five million followers, he quit Twitter. ‘I didn’t really like the way I was on it,’ he says. ‘I have friends who have social media and I don’t like them on social media.
‘One of the other things I got sick of was that someone would die and you would feel compelled to say something. Nothing exists unless it can be defined by a celebrity and I don’t want to be part of that.’
Pegg doesn’t consider himself to be a celebrity (‘that’s not my job’) and retains a fan’s-eye perspective, which informs much of his work. He still gets starstruck when meeting his idols, like Steven Spielberg, who directed him in Ready Player One. ‘I’ve learnt how to not appear starstruck but I’m always excited to see him,’ enthuses Pegg, who will make his own debut as a director later this year. ‘He’s intuitive and smart but incredibly personable and sweet. I find myself just loving him.’
Pegg’s eyes crease with mirth. He’s fully aware how extraordinary all this sounds. Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg, Gwyneth Paltrow, global rock stars – somebody’s having a laugh, surely. ‘I guess I’m seen as the kind of guy who lucked out,’ he grins, adjusting his shades. ‘The regular bloke down the pub who won a competition to go to Hollywood.’
‘Mission: Impossible – Fallout’ is in cinemas July 25 in IMAX®, 3D & 2D. Pegg also stars in ‘Terminal’, released on DVD, Blu-ray and Digital on August 6