"What scares me? Oh, now that's a big question. I don't know what scares me — cockroaches, nuclear apocalypse. Fear is an interesting thing. It has a place in all of our lives. I try to be as fearless as possible. I don't always succeed, but I like to think I try."
Zachary John Quinto (born June 2, 1977 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is an American actor. Getting his start in bit roles on television, his role as the villainous Sylar on NBC's Heroes was his breakthrough performance, which ultimately led to his casting as Spock in J. J. Abrams' Star Trek film series. He's also widely known for starring in two seasons of FX's American Horror Story.
Zachary is also one of Hollywood's most prominent openly gay actors, and he used to date Jonathan Groff.
Selected filmography:
- Charmed (2003) as Familiar Hunter Warlock.
- 24 (2003-2004) as Adam Kaufman
- Heroes (2006-2010) as Sylar
- Star Trek Kelvin Timeline as Spock
- Star Trek (2009)
- Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
- Star Trek Beyond (2016)
- Margin Call (2011) as Peter Sullivan
- American Horror Story (2011-2013, 2022) in various roles:
- American Horror Story: Murder House (2011) as Chad Warwick
- American Horror Story: Asylum (2012-2013) as Oliver Thredson / Bloody Face
- American Horror Story: NYC (2022) as Sam
- What's Your Number? (2011) as Rick
- Girls (2015) as Ace
- The Slap (2015) as Harry Apostolou
- Hannibal (2015) as Neal Frank
- Hitman: Agent 47 (2015) as John Smith
- Snowden (2016) as Glenn Greenwald
- NOS4A2 (2019) as Charlie Manx
- Superman: Man of Tomorrow (2020) as Lex Luthor (voice)
- Invincible (2021) (2021-) as Robot (voice)
- The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder (2022-) as Barry Leibowitz-Jenkins (voice)
His roles provides examples of:
- Corpsing: Almost broke character when Spock was interrogating Kirk and Scotty; the final scene in the film shows his expression twitching just slightly enough to be missed.
- Also applies to several scenes in Heroes where Sylar's expression can change just enough to indicate near-corpsing.
- Deadpan Snarker: Plays one of the best.
- Dyeing for Your Art: In order to put on the prosthetic Spock eyebrows, he had to shave off his own. Chris Pine described it as a "forehead Brazilian wax."
- Fandom Nod: When an interviewer asked him about the the SArmy (Sylar's Army), who raise money for charities that he supports, he replied that he'd heard of them and considered it pretty damn cool.
- Funny Character, Boring Actor: Inverted. He's most famous for playing the famously serious, largely humorless Spock but is far more energetic and quick-witted in real life.
- Kubrick Stare: An expert at pulling these off as his time as Sylar demonstrated.
- Mr. Fanservice: As Sylar's popularity increased, the writers wrote in more thinly veiled Fanservice moments into his scenes. There's a reason he and Milo Ventimiglia, who plays Peter, have the most shirtless scenes in the show.
- Promoted Fanboy: An avowed drama geek from the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama, he was extremely pleased to be cast as Louis in a production of Angels in America as he was a fan of the material.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: He plays this up to its full hilt on the press tours for Star Trek (2009) and Star Trek Into Darkness. In order to entertain themselves and alleviate the boredom of press junkets, he and Chris Pine engaged in a game of cramming in as many vocabulary words as they can into their answers, regardless of the context.
- Typecasting: Typically cast as mentally unbalanced or at least morally dark Jerkass characters. His roles as Sasan and Spock, and his roles in Margin Call and We'll Never Have Paris is actually him Playing Against Type.
- The typecasting goes so deep that he was listed under "killers" on the character page for Hannibal before his episode even aired. It turns out he was innocent of any crime and completely harmless. For almost three seasons, it's been said that his character attacked his psychiatrist when it's been quite the opposite way around the whole time.
