What’s Up, Spock?
He might be a famous Vulcan, but Zachary Quinto has no problem being fully human.
Update Sunday 9:00am:
A publicist for New York Magazine has issued the following release:
In this week’s
New York magazine, on newsstands Monday October 17 and
online now, actor Zachary Quinto, perhaps best known as
Spock in
J.J. Abrams’s
Star Trek, says definitively that he’s gay. Quinto tells
New York contributing editor
Benjamin Wallace, of his eight-month role last year in
Angels in America, “…as a gay man, it made me feel like there’s still so much work to be done, and there’s still so many things that need to be looked at and addressed.”
Quinto has played a series of gay roles, including on Tori Spelling’s TV show So NoTORIous, and on the new FX series American Horror Story, and has been outspoken about gay-rights issues, but he has not previously identified himself as gay. Speaking with Wallace about the cultural bipolarity that can see gay marriage legalized in New York in the same year that yet another gay teenager was bullied and killed himself, Quinto says, “And again, as a gay man I look at that and say there’s a hopelessness that surrounds it, but as a human being I look at it and say ‘Why? Where’s this disparity coming from, and why can’t we as a culture and society dig deeper to examine that?’ We’re terrified of facing ourselves.”
Quinto, currently promoting his film Margin Call, a financial-crisis thriller in which he co-stars alongside Kevin Spacey, Stanley Tucci, and Jeremy Irons and the first feature for his production company, also addresses the Wall Street protesters with Wallace: “As a left-leaning Democrat, I feel a sense of resonance with their position. But as a citizen of this country, I feel deeply unsettled that people are rising up in movements against each other. It feels like we’re missing the mark … The bottom line is we’re all fucked, and we’re all in this together.”
The extended Q&A with Quinto is online at
Vulture.
Zachary Quinto has
made a statement via his website. In it he says, quite eloquently, that the tragic recent death of
Jamey Rodemeyer is what prompted him to ultimately come out:
"It is my intention to live an authentic life of compassion and integrity and action. jamey rodemeyer's life changed mine. and while his death only makes me wish that i had done this sooner - i am eternally grateful to him for being the catalyst for change within me. now i can only hope to serve as the same catalyst for even one other person in this world. that - i believe - is all that we can ask of ourselves and of each other."
