Simon Pegg says he was ‘a wreck’ while shooting ‘Mission: Impossible III’ due to alcoholism

• Simon Pegg discussed his past struggles with alcoholism.
• Pegg said he drank a "whole mini-bar" while shooting "Mission: Impossible III."
• He said he reached "rock bottom" after he could no longer hide his addiction from his wife.
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British actor Simon Pegg told the "Headstrong‬" podcast that he was left in "kind of a wreck" on the set of "Mission: Impossible III" due to his struggles with alcoholism.

Pegg, 55, who plays the role of Benji Dunn in the "Mission: Impossible" franchise, told the podcast that he began using alcohol as a tool to curb anxiety and nerves early in his life. And he said specific anxiety around the production of "Mission: Impossible III" led him to drink heavily.

He said: "I remember being stuck in this hotel room in Beverly Hills and being so panicky and feeling so unwell that I drank a lot. I drank my whole mini-bar because I wanted to not feel that way. By the time I came on set to do my scenes, I was kind of a wreck because I was super anxious and I'd been drinking and it was so self-destructive."

He continued: "All those fixes are so temporary, so quick, that they don't solve the problem, they just dam it up. Any time I knew I was in trouble I just kicked the can down the street by having a pint. It's not the way to go."

Pegg continued to say that he reached "rock bottom" when he stopped to have a drink on the way home from the airport after returning from a Comic-Con convention. He said when he arrived at home he was unable to "disguise the mess" he was in from his wife.

The actor said that event led him to seek professional help and he is now sober.

"Having given myself to the prospect of being helped, having admitted I have a problem, and being there to solve it was a great relief," he said. "I came out a better person, that's not to suggest I was fixed in any way, but it certainly gave me the tools to know how to cope."

Pegg has previous discussed how his issues with alcoholism affected his professional work. In 2016, he told The Guardian that "Mission: Impossible III" was made during his "crisis years" and he now finds it difficult to rewatch the film.

"When I watch that film back, I can see where I was then, which was fairly lost, and unhappy, and an alcoholic," he said.

When asked how he managed to hide his addiction from the industry, he said: "I'm an actor, so I acted all the fucking time."

He continued: "One thing [addiction] does is make you clever at not giving anything away. People think junkies and alcoholics are slovenly, unmotivated people. They're not - they are incredibly organized. They can nip out for a quick shot of whisky and you wouldn't know they have gone. It's as if … you are micro-managed by it."