Since then, we've seen Pegg in Hot Fuzz (re-teaming with his mates), Run Fatboy Run, and Mission: Impossible 3. Next year, he'll assume the role of Scotty in J.J. Abram's Star Trek, which will put him in a whole new category.

Pegg's latest film is the comedy How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, in which he leads an ensemble featuring Jeff Bridges, Kirsten Dunst, and Megan Fox. The Big Picture had a chance to sit down with Simon as he traveled through Phoenix last month.

This movie takes a look at celebrity culture from a few angles. There's the worship of the famous, the rather cynical creation of a product like Sophie Maes (Megan Fox), and there's the rather implicit undertone that the media can make or break these people regardless of who they are. Do you find that to be as true in America as it is, at least in our perception, in England?

I think that’s quite a generalization in some respects as the particular publication that Sidney goes to work for behaves like that, but there are other publications in American that don’t want to tear stuff down and undermine their celebrities. In Britain, there are those that have a disdain for the celebrities in the U.K., but similarly there are magazines that worship them unconditionally. For the purpose of the movie, Sidney’s background is in Snipe and taking cracks at celebrities, and stoking the flames rather than actually trying to put them out. That metaphor worked in the end. I didn’t think it would.

I think I’m still pretty cult-y. But I was in Dallas the other day and everywhere I went, people would say, “Hey, it’s Shaun of the Dead.” They all knew what I’d done; it wasn’t like “Hey, there’s that guy that I don’t know what he did, but I know him."

No, that was actually in the script. Someone else the other day asked if there was a running thread of Lebowski references. Especially with all the White Russians and Jeff being in the film.

Yeah, Nick and I just finished writing something that we’re going to go into production with next year. Edgar and me will get back into the office when we’re done with our respective other projects and come up with the third film in what we’re calling the “Blood and Ice Cream trilogy."

The trouble when we spoke about Hot Fuzz on the Shaun of the Dead tour was that, that was like a year before we wrote Hot Fuzz. So [after Shaun] people were like, OK: Where's Hot Fuzz?"