Simon Pegg has revealed that he struggled with depression and alcoholism after the success of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

"I was depressed. I had always been susceptible to it. But at the same time as I started to ascend into what would conventionally be regarded as a success, I was going down," he told Empire.

"The more material success presented itself to me, the less I could understand why it wasn’t fulfilling me in any way. It wasn’t that it wasn’t fulfilling me, it was because I was depressed."

Pegg says he began to drink more heavily because of his illness, and that he can see what a state he was in when he looks back at his films from the time.

"If you look at Burke & Hare, I’m bloated and fucking dead-eyed… I look at it now and think, 'Fuck me, I was in a dark place then'. I was drunk a lot of the time and I was profoundly unhappy."

Eventually, he says, he "crashed out".

"At Comic-Con in 2010 — I’ve never told anyone this — we were promoting Paul and I sort of went missing for about four days. I got back to the UK and just checked myself in somewhere," he said.

It was after that that he got help to stop drinking and "got well".