Zachary Quinto

Zachary Quinto
Quinto in 2019
Born	Zachary John Quinto (1977-06-02) June 2, 1977 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Education	Carnegie Mellon University (BFA)
Occupations	Actor producer
Years active	2000–present
Relatives	Peter J. McArdle (great-grandfather) Joseph A. McArdle (grandfather)

Zachary John Quinto (/ˈkwɪntoʊ/; born June 2, 1977) is an American actor. He is known for his roles as Sylar, the primary antagonist from the science fiction drama series Heroes (2006–2010); Spock in the film Star Trek (2009) and its sequels Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) and Star Trek Beyond (2016); Charlie Manx in the AMC series NOS4A2, and Dr. Oliver Thredson in American Horror Story: Asylum, for which he received a nomination for an Emmy Award. He stars in and produces Brilliant Minds, a medical drama on NBC. His other starring film roles include Margin Call (2011), Hitman: Agent 47 (2015), Snowden (2016), and Hotel Artemis (2018). He also appeared in smaller roles on television series, such as So Notorious, The Slap, and 24, and on stage in Angels in America, The Glass Menagerie, and Smokefall.

Early life

Zachary John Quinto was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Margaret "Margo" (née McArdle), who worked at an investment firm and later at a magistrate's office, and Joseph John "Joe" Quinto, a barber. He was raised in the suburb of Green Tree, Pennsylvania, and attended Saints Simon and Jude Catholic School (closed 2010). His father died of cancer when Quinto was seven years old, and Quinto and his brother, Joe, were subsequently raised by their mother. Quinto's maternal great-grandfather was the labor activist and Republican Pittsburgh City Councilman Peter J. McArdle, whom Pittsburgh's P.J. McArdle Roadway is named after. His maternal grandfather was Joseph A. McArdle, a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Quinto was raised Catholic. His father was of Italian descent, while his mother was of Irish ancestry. Quinto graduated from Central Catholic High School in 1995, where he participated in its musicals and won the Gene Kelly Award for Best Supporting Actor, and then attended Carnegie Mellon University's School of Drama, from which he graduated in 1999.

Career

Quinto first appeared on television in the short-lived television series The Others, and appeared as a guest star on shows including CSI, Touched by an Angel, Charmed, Six Feet Under, Lizzie McGuire, and L.A. Dragnet. In 2003, during the theatrical run of Endgame by Samuel Beckett, directed by Kristina Lloyd at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles playing the role of Clov, he landed a recurring role as computer expert Adam Kaufman on the Fox series 24; Quinto appeared in 23 episodes of the third season.

Quinto at the premiere party of Heroes' third season in 2008

In 2006, Quinto played the role of Sasan, the haughty, bisexual Iranian-American best friend of Tori Spelling on her VH1 series So NoTORIous. Later that year, he joined the cast of Heroes as Gabriel Gray, better known as the serial killer Sylar. He worked on the series until its cancellation in 2010 after four seasons.

His casting as a young Spock in the J. J. Abrams–directed reboot of the Star Trek film franchise was officially announced at the 2007 Comic-Con. Speaking alongside Leonard Nimoy at a press conference to promote the first new Star Trek film, Quinto revealed that Nimoy had been given casting approval over who would play the role of the young Spock. "For me Leonard's involvement was only liberating, frankly," says Quinto. "I knew that he had approval over the actor that would play young Spock, so when I got the role I knew from the beginning it was with his blessing."

In a September 2008 interview, Abrams said of Quinto's performance as Spock: "Zachary brought a gravity and an incredible sense of humor, which is a wonderful combination because Spock's character is deceivingly complicated. The revelation for me watching the movie, when I finally got to watch the whole thing after working on sequences, was that he is extraordinary. He was doing things I didn't even realize while we were shooting – these amazing things to track his story." Quinto also made references to Star Trek's historical record for diversity and inclusiveness in its casting and storylines.

After Star Trek, he appeared in the comedy short Boutonniere (2009). It "...was a movie written and directed by my former landlady and friend, [actress Coley Sohn]. She called up and said, 'Would you do me a favor and be in my short film?'"

Karl Urban, Quinto, J. J. Abrams, and Chris Pine at the Star Trek Into Darkness Australian movie premiere in Sydney, April 2013

In 2008, Quinto joined with Corey Moosa and Neal Dodson to form Before the Door Pictures. The company produced projects in film, television, new media, and published two graphic novels in a deal with comic book publisher Archaia Entertainment: they published a graphic novel called Mr. Murder is Dead, created by writer Victor Quinaz, closely followed by LUCID: A Matthew Dee Adventure written by writer/actor Michael McMillian.

Quinto also starred in several comedy shorts. He played a strangely lovable kidnapper in "Hostage: A Love Story", written by the comedy duo HoltandSteele, for Before the Door Pictures and Funny or Die. He also played a prospective dog adopter (based on Quinto's own experience) in "Dog Eat Dog", written and directed by Sian Heder, and premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival in 2012.

Quinto has also kept up his theatre experience, which includes roles in a variety of productions, including classics such as Samuel Beckett's Endgame at the Los Angeles Odyssey Theatres in 2003, Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing at the Los Angeles Shakespeare Festival and Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow at the Old Globe Theatre. From October 2010 to February 2011, Quinto played the lead role of Louis Ironson in an Off-Broadway revival of Tony Kushner's Angels in America at the Signature Theatre, New York City. For this role, Quinto received the Theatre World Award.

Quinto at a Midtown Comics signing in 2011

In 2013, Quinto played the role of Tom Wingfield in the American Repertory Theatre's production of The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. He was also in the Broadway reprisal of the production, in 2014. In February 2016, Zachary appeared in the New York premiere of MCC Theater's Smokefall.

In 2010, Quinto's company Before the Door Pictures produced Margin Call, an independent film about the financial crisis of 2007–08. Quinto played the role of Peter Sullivan in the film, in a cast that included Jeremy Irons, Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Stanley Tucci, Penn Badgley and Demi Moore. Margin Call premiered in January 2011 at the Sundance Film Festival. Margin Call received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay, by J. C. Chandor. Quinto was an executive producer for Chandor's next film All Is Lost (2013) with Robert Redford as the sole actor.

In October 2011, Quinto began a recurring role on the FX series American Horror Story as Chad, former owner of the house. Quinto returned for the second season in one of the lead roles, as Dr. Oliver Thredson. In 2014, Quinto and his Before the Door partners produced a Chris Moore project, The Chair, a documentary series on Starz that shows the process of two directors bringing their first feature to the screen. In 2015, Quinto was a guest on the acclaimed TV series Girls and Hannibal.

Movie-wise, Quinto reprised his role of Spock in Star Trek Into Darkness in 2013 and in Star Trek Beyond, released in 2016. In addition, he played John Smith in Hitman: Agent 47 in 2015. At the other end of the spectrum from the action-oriented Agent 47, Quinto appeared opposite James Franco in the drama I Am Michael (2015), a film that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. In 2016, he portrayed journalist Glenn Greenwald in the Edward Snowden biopic Snowden, narrated, as space scientist Pascal Lee, in the documentary film Passage to Mars, and appeared as himself in the documentary film For the Love of Spock. In 2018, he starred in the Broadway play The Boys in the Band.

In 2016, science fiction author John Scalzi released a novella, The Dispatcher, created specifically for Audible; Quinto narrated the story, as well as the second book in the series, Murder by Other Means. He also starred with Michelle Buteau in the Audible scripted podcast, Sorry Charlie Miller.

In 2022, Quinto made his debut on the West End stage in London as Gore Vidal in James Graham's new play Best of Enemies. The play revolves around the adversarial televised debates between the gay, liberal writer Vidal and the conservative polemicist William F. Buckley Jr. (played by British actor David Harewood) during the 1968 US Democratic and Republican National Conventions. The production, directed by Jeremy Herrin first at the Old Vic then at the Noël Coward Theatre, was a commercial and critical hit.

Quinto has modeled for magazines including GQ and August.

Personal life

Quinto publicly came out as gay in October 2011. He explained that, after the suicide of bisexual teenager Jamey Rodemeyer, he felt that "living a gay life without publicly acknowledging it is simply not enough to make any significant contribution to the immense work that lies ahead on the road to complete equality." Prior to his coming out, Quinto had long been an active supporter of gay rights and organizations, including The Trevor Project. In 2009, he appeared in the one-night production Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays, a benefit stage reading in response to the passing of Proposition 8, as well as in the play The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later, about the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard. In 2010, Quinto contributed a video to the It Gets Better Project, an Internet-based campaign that aims to prevent suicide among LGBTQAI+ youth. In 2012, Quinto campaigned on behalf of Barack Obama, including appearing in the video Obama Pride: LGBT Americans For Obama.

From 2010 to 2013, Quinto was in a relationship with actor Jonathan Groff. Quinto began dating model and musician Miles McMillan in the summer of 2013. In early 2015, the couple moved into a NoHo, Manhattan apartment they purchased together. In November 2015, Vogue magazine called them "a power couple whose domain extends across the film, fashion, and art scene." The two ended their relationship in early 2019.

In 2017, Quinto criticized the timing of actor Kevin Spacey's decision to come out as part of his response to allegations of sexual advances towards then-14-year-old actor Anthony Rapp. He called the manner of Spacey's announcement "deeply sad and troubling," feeling he had not stood up "as a point of pride—in the light of all his many awards and accomplishments—thus inspiring tens of thousands of struggling LGBTQ kids around the world", but instead as "a calculated manipulation to deflect attention from the very serious accusation that he attempted to molest one".

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2009	Star Trek	Spock
2011	Margin Call	Peter Sullivan	Also producer
	Girl Walks into a Bar	Nicolas "Nick"
	What's Your Number?	Rick
2013	Star Trek Into Darkness	Spock
2014	We'll Never Have Paris	Jameson
2015	I Am Michael	Bennett
	Hitman: Agent 47	John Smith
2016	Tallulah	Andreas
	Star Trek Beyond	Spock
	Snowden	Glenn Greenwald
	Passage to Mars	Pascal Lee	Voice
2017	Aardvark	Josh Norman	Also producer
	Who We Are Now	Peter
2018	Hotel Artemis	Crosby
2019	High Flying Bird	David Starr
2020	Superman: Man of Tomorrow	Lex Luthor	Voice
	The Boys in the Band	Harold
2021	The Shuroo Process	N/A	Executive producer
2023	Down Low	Gary
	He Went That Way	Jim
2024	Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part One	Lex Luthor	Voice
	Adult Best Friends	TBA
	Distant	L.E.O.N.A.R.D.	Voice

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2000	The Others	Tony	Episode: "Unnamed"
2001	Touched by an Angel	Mike	Episode: "When Sunny Gets Blue"
2002	CSI: Crime Scene Investigation	Mitchell Sullivan	Episode: "Anatomy of a Lye"
	Off Centre	Smudge	Episode: "Diddler on the Roof"
	Lizzie McGuire	Director	Episode: "Party Over Here"
	Haunted	Paul Kingsley	Episode: "Grievous Angels"
	The Agency	Jay Lambert	Episode: "Air Lex"
2003	Six Feet Under	Hip Student	Episode: "The Eye Inside"
	Charmed	Warlock	Episode: "Cat House"
	Miracles	Messenger	Episode: "Battle at Shadow Ridge"
2003–2004	24	Adam Kaufman	23 episodes
2004	Dragnet	Howard Simms	Episode: "Frame of Mind"
	Hawaii	Loomis	Episode: "No Man Is an Island"
	Joan of Arcadia	Pretentious Filmmaker God	Episode: "P.O.V."
2005	Blind Justice	Scott Collins	Episode: "In Your Face"
2006	Crossing Jordan	Leo Fulton Jr.	Episode: "Code of Ethics"
	Twins	Jason	Episode: "When I Move, You Move"
	So Notorious	Sasan	10 episodes
2006–2010	Heroes	Sylar	60 episodes
2008	Robot Chicken	Archimedes Q. Porter / Sylar (voice)	Episode: "Bionic Cow"
2011	American Horror Story: Murder House	Chad Warwick	4 episodes
2012–2013	American Horror Story: Asylum	Oliver Thredson	12 episodes
2014	The Chair	Himself	10 episodes
2015	The Slap	Harry Apostolou	7 episodes
	Girls	Ace	2 episodes
	Hannibal	Neal Frank	2 episodes
2016	Lip Sync Battle	Himself	Episode: "Zoe Saldana vs. Zachary Quinto"
2018	In Search of...	Himself	10 episodes
2019	Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt	Eli Rubin	2 episodes
	NOVA	Narrator	5 Episodes
2019–2020	NOS4A2	Charlie Manx	20 episodes
2019–2021	Big Mouth	Aiden (voice)	11 episodes
2020	Little America	Teacher	Episode: "The Silence"
2021	Who Wants to Be a Millionaire	Himself	Episode: "In the Hot Seat: Amanda Peet, Zachary Quinto & Karamo Brown"
	Inside Job	Doctor SkullFinger (voice)	Episode: "Ghost Protocol"
2021–present	Invincible	Robot / Rudolph "Rudy" Connors (voice)	13 episodes
2022	The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder	Barry Leibowitz-Jenkins (voice)	5 episodes
	Who Do You Think You Are?	Himself	Episode: "Zachary Quinto"
	American Horror Story: NYC	Sam Jones	7 episodes
2023	American Horror Story: Delicate	Himself	Episode: "Rockabye"; uncredited
2024	Brilliant Minds	Oliver Wolf	Main role, also producer

Stage

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2010	Angels in America	Louis Ironson	Signature Theatre Company Off-Broadway
2013	The Glass Menagerie	Tom Wingfield	American Repertory Theater Boston, MA
			Booth Theatre Broadway
2016	Smokefall	Footnote / Fetus Two / Samuel	MCC Theater
2018	The Boys in The Band	Harold	Booth Theatre
2022	Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?	George	Geffen Playhouse Los Angeles, CA
2022	Best of Enemies	Gore Vidal	Noël Coward Theatre West End

Video games

Year	Title	Voice role
2000	Code Blue	Monty Rodriguez
2006	24: The Game	Adam Kaufman
2010	Star Trek Online	Khitomer Emergency Medical Hologram
2013	Star Trek	Spock

Awards and nominations

Year	Award	Work	Result
2007	TV Land Award for Future Classic Award	Heroes	Won
	Teen Choice Award for Choice TV Villain		Nominated
2008	Teen Choice Award for Choice TV Villain		Nominated
2009	Teen Choice Award for Choice TV Villain		Nominated
	Teen Choice Award for Best Rumble (shared with Chris Pine)	Star Trek	Nominated
	Critics' Choice Award for Best Cast		Nominated
	Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Cast		Won
	Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association for Best Ensemble		Nominated
2010	People's Choice Award for Favorite Breakout Movie Actor		Nominated
	SFX Award for Best Actor	Heroes, Star Trek	Won
2011	Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play	Angels in America	Nominated
	Theatre World Award		Won
	Tina Award for Best Actor (Play)		Won
	Tina Award for Best Ensemble (Play)		Won
	Tina Award for Best Stage Duo (shared with Christian Borle)		Won
	Gotham Independent Film Award for Best Ensemble Performance	Margin Call	Nominated
	Phoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best Ensemble Acting		Nominated
2012	Central Ohio Film Critics Association Award for Best Ensemble		Nominated
	AACTA International Award for Best Film (as producer)		Nominated
	Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature (as producer)		Won
	Robert Altman Award		Won
	Saturn Award for Best Guest Starring Role on Television	American Horror Story	Nominated
2013	Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Movie/Miniseries	American Horror Story: Asylum	Won
	Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie		Nominated
	PAAFTJ Television Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or TV Movie		—
	PAAFTJ Television Award for Best Cast in a Miniseries or TV Movie		—
	People's Choice Award Favorite Movie Duo (shared with Chris Pine)	Star Trek Into Darkness	Nominated
	Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Ensemble	The Glass Menagerie	Won
2014	Drama League Award for Distinguished Performance		Nominated
	Broadway.com Audience Choice Award for Favorite Leading Actor in a Play		Nominated
	BroadwayWorld.com Award for Best Leading Actor in a Play		Nominated
2017	Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Film	Star Trek Beyond	Nominated

See also

• Sundance Film Festival
• LGBT culture in New York City
• List of LGBT people from New York City
• List of Carnegie Mellon University people
• NYC Pride March

External links

• Official website
• Zachary Quinto at IMDb