Actor Simon Pegg grew up as a huge Star Wars fan and so meeting the late Carrie Fisher and holding her hand was a highlight in his life13:03, 15 Jul 2026Updated 13:04, 15 Jul 2026Star Wars superfan Simon Pegg has admitted he confessed to Carrie Fisher “I’ve always loved you” on the film set of sequel to Return Of The Jedi - only for her to swear at him in response.Actor Pegg, 56, grew up watching the trilogy of Star Wars movies and then got the chance to appear in Star Wars: The Force Awakens when it was filmed in 2014.Playing Unkar Plutt he admits he is in it “for five minutes” but walked around in delight as “people that I idolised as a kid” from the original films were there including Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill.Discussing Carrie Fisher, who famously played Princess Leia, he admitted she was his childhood crush, and added: “Obviously, I immediately wanted to talk to Carrie and she had this great little dog. We were walking arm in arm around the kind of rebel base, Resistance base it was called. Which is for me like, ahhh, dreamy and we were just chatting and talking about stuff.“She was super smart, Carrie. She’s so kind of humorous. And I think that the experience of being back in Star Wars was quite overwhelming for her, because it was like this thing that had been a blessing and a curse in a way. You know? The kind of attention that she got, but also the attention she got, both sides of that coin.“And we stopped and we sort of faced each other and we were talking and I kind of got a bit lost in her eyes. I remember having this realisation that it was the same eyes, you know? It was the same eyes that I’d watched hundreds of times as a kid and a picture I had by my bed and all this stuff.“And I just kind of fessed up to her and I said, ‘Look, you know I’ve always loved you, don’t you?’ “And she grabbed me by the hand, and she looked at my wedding ring and she went, ‘F*** you!’ And I was just like, ‘Ahh!’ Like cloud nine. It was just the fact that if I hadn’t been wearing a wedding ring…”The pair then laughed and became friends for the next few years. Fisher died in 2016 aged 60 and just a couple of years after this moment on set. In a 2020 interview with Vanity Fair, Pegg previously described this day with Fisher as “the best day of my life”.Pegg has starred in a number of Mission Impossible movies with Tom Cruise as well as Star Trek films with feature CGI and the latest technology. But he said he did not think AI could take over the film industry in the future.Appearing on the Dish podcast, he said: “AI is still, no matter how realistic it looks or sounds, it still has no anima. So there’s no spark in it, you know. Like when you see AI actors in things, I see them on Instagram all the time, it just sounds so robotic and, and without any emotion.”Turning to show co-host Nick Grimshaw, he added: “I doubt any computers could capture your spark.”Pegg also used the food-based podcast to describe the strangest meal he had eaten, containing worms in South America.He said: “I was in Mexico, and I had a maguey worm taco which was literally worms in a taco. Like those little maggoty worms. Which looks repulsive- but tastes amazing. So, I thoroughly recommend it. They’re just squirming away on your taco.”* Dish from Waitrose is available on all podcast providers.Article continues belowLike this story? For more of the latest showbiz news and gossip, follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok , Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads .