Simon Pegg has admitted he found the furore over his shocking new look “weird”.

The British actor caused quite a stir back in March when he shared a photo of his new physique, after getting completely shredded for an upcoming role in the thriller Inheritance.

However, in an interview with GQ Hype, Simon revealed he found the response to his body transformation a little on the strange side.

“The response from that picture was so weird,” he said. “Some people said, ‘you look ill’, which is what my wife thought. Others were saying, ‘well done’.

“And the thing is, it wasn’t meant to be an aspirational thing. It was a snapshot that my trainer took and I really didn’t expect the furore that followed. All I can think of is that people still think of me as that schlubby guy from Shaun Of The Dead.”

Simon worked closely with personal trainer Nick Lower to help him lose 9kg in the space of six months, lowering his body fat from 12% to 8%.

“The brief for this role was lean, VERY lean,” Nick wrote when he first shared the photo in March. “It required a specific body shape & look… 6 months of hard work has paid off and I tip my hat to you sir.”

Simon later tweeted that the intense regime had led to “occasional mild grumpiness” on his part.

It was announced last year that Simon had landed the role in Inheritance, with Kate Mara co-starring and Vaughn Stein on directing duties.

Little is known of the film so far, or why it requires Simon to be quite so lean, but Variety reports that it tells the story of a wealthy father who dies, leaving his wife and daughter with a “shocking secret inheritance that threatens to… destroy their lives”.

Sounds intense.

This year, Simon also starred in Lost Transmissions, an indie drama about a man who has schizophrenia.