Simon Pegg: “I kept my alcoholism secret on ‘Mission: Impossible’ set”

Actor Simon Pegg has revealed that he kept his alcoholism secret on the set of Mission: Impossible.

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Speaking on BBC4’s Desert Island Discs recently, Pegg says that he hid his reliance on alcohol while on film sets in the early 2000s.

“You become very sneaky when you have something like that in your life,” he told the show’s host, Lauren Laverne.

He continued: “You learn how to do it without anyone noticing because it takes over. It wants to sustain itself and it will do everything it can to not be stopped…But eventually it just gets to a point when it can’t be hidden, and that’s when, thankfully, I was able to pull out of the dive.”

Pegg had spoken before about how his mental health problems began after he experienced depression as a teenager after his A-level exams and before studying at the University of Bristol.

It later returned unexpectedly in 2006, while he was working on Mission: Impossible III, and Pegg recalls using alcohol to help numb his pain. Later, the birth of his daughter Matilda in 2009 led him to get help and recover.

Last month, a trailer was released for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.

Directed by Christopher McQuarrie, the seventh instalment in the Mission: Impossible franchise sees Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) confront faces from the past as a new weapon threatens to wipe out humanity.

Alongside Cruise, Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Henry Czerny and Ving Rhames will reprise their roles from previous outings.

A synopsis of the new film reads: “In Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Ethan Hunt and his IMF team embark on their most dangerous mission yet: to track down a terrifying new weapon that threatens all of humanity before it falls into the wrong hands.

“With control of the future and the fate of the world at stake, and dark forces from Ethan’s past closing in, a deadly race around the globe begins. Confronted by a mysterious, all-powerful enemy, Ethan is forced to consider that nothing can matter more than his mission – not even the lives of those he cares about most.”

McQuarrie directed both parts of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning back-to-back, with the sequel set to be released on June 28, 2024.

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