Simon Pegg reveals some behind the scenes antics from How To Lose Friends And Alienate People – including his encounters with the real Toby Young.
Fresh back from a whistle top promotional tour where he faced a grilling by hundreds of journalists, Simon Pegg stepped straight into his latest role – playing a celebrity obsessed magazine writer who has a terrible knack of upsetting everyone including the people he’s sent to interview.
In ‘How To Lose Friends And Alienate People’ Pegg plays British hack Sidney Young who lands a highly coveted job on an upscale Manhattan based glossy called Sharps. The film is loosely based on British journalist Toby Young’s memoir of his time working on Vanity Fair magazine.
Pegg, 38, was born in Gloucestershire, England, and graduated from Bristol University with an arts degree in Theatre, Film and Television. After college, he began his career as a stand-up comedian before breaking into television and radio, working on comedies including Big Train and Hippies.
In 1999 he created and co-wrote the Channel Four sitcom ‘Spaced’ with Jessica Stevenson – the series also featured Nick Frost, who would later work with Pegg in ‘Shaun of the Dead’ and ‘Hot Fuzz’. They are planning a third film together, Paul, a road movie about two British ‘geeks’ on their way to a comic convention in San Diego, next year. Pegg also stars in the latest ‘Star Wars movie’, directed by J.J Abrams.