Simon Pegg

Simon Pegg came to prominence in British comedy as co-creator of the Channel 4 sitcom Spaced (1999 to 2001), directed by Edgar Wright. He and Wright then co-wrote Shaun of the Dead (2004), Hot Fuzz (2007) and The World's End (2013), the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, with Wright directing and Pegg starring opposite Nick Frost. Pegg and Frost also wrote and starred in Paul (2011).

His specialty is a man whose confidence exceeds his competence by exactly the margin that is funny. Shaun cannot commit to a phone call, let alone an apocalypse. Nicholas Angel plays police competence as a personality disorder, which is a much harder joke to sustain than it looks. Gary King in The World's End is genuinely unpleasant company, a man performing his own teenage highlight reel at forty, and Pegg does not soften him for likeability. That willingness to be the problem rather than the hero is what separates him from the average British comic actor who crossed over.

The Hollywood half of the career is mostly ensemble work, and he has quietly turned one of those parts into something real. Benji Dunn arrives as comic relief in Mission: Impossible III, gets promoted to field agent, and by Fallout he is generating tension rather than releasing it. Elsewhere he is Scotty across the Kelvin-timeline Star Trek films, Unkar Plutt in The Force Awakens, Buck in the Ice Age sequels, Ogden Morrow in Ready Player One and Hughie's father in The Boys.