Simon Pegg and Megan Fox in a scene from How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. (Kerry Brown/MGM/Associated Press)

British comic actor Simon Pegg hits the big screens this week as geeky journalist Sidney Young in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.

Based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Toby Young, it has an off-beat humour that appealed to the actor and writer who starred in comic zombie movie Shaun of the Dead and cop satire Hot Fuzz.2

"The script was very funny and very sharp, and it was being directed by Robert Weide who directed much of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is one of my all-time favourite shows," Pegg told CBC cultural affairs show Q on Tuesday. "That alone for me was the draw."

Pegg plays a celebrity-bashing, prank-pulling, socially inept English journalist who gets hired by a Vanity-Fair-like Manhattan magazine to write the very puff pieces he despises.

Pegg says he doesn't hanker after leading-man roles and found this one just plain fun.

"I think they needed somebody to redeem the character slightly," he said. "When you're playing a part who's as objectionable as Toby can be at times in 90 minutes, you have to make sure they're slightly sympathetic."

Pegg's British TV career took off with the sitcom Spaced, which he wrote as well as starred in. But now he's in demand as a character actor in American film.

Sidney is the kind of British character who can't quite straddle the cultural gap to make it in America. Pegg said he understands that kind of alienation.

" People in the U.K. feel a real kinship with North America just because we speak the same language and feel we're distant cousins," Pegg said.

"In actual fact, you don't realize how foreign you are until you get here. When I'm over here promoting my own films like Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, you learn pretty quickly that you're actually selling a foreign film."

Still, Sidney winds up in a clinch with Kirsten Dunst on the Brooklyn Bridge, an indication he may not be as inept in all areas of life.

For Pegg, his next role is one he takes much more seriously: Scotty in the next Star Trek movie.

"I'm a huge fan of [late Canadian actor] James Doohan, and it's a characterization that cemented him eternal life in the pantheon of science fiction," Pegg said. "I thought, 'Wow, this is a responsibility.' I absolutely made sure I wasn't doing anything that could be construed as an impression of James Doohan or pastiche of him."

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People debuted at Cannes and is due for commercial release later this week.