Out actor Zachary Quinto said this week
that coming out gay has not hurt his career.
Quinto, who is promoting his latest
film, Hitman: Agent 47, quietly came out in a 2011 interview
with New York Magazine. He later revealed that he was
inspired to come out by Jamey Rodemeyer, the 14-year-old Buffalo, New
York-area student who committed suicide after being targeted by
bullies over identifying as gay.
“I work more now than I ever did when
I was in the closet, and I'm doing a wider range and variety of roles
than I ever did before I came out,” Quinto told The
Telegraph.
“I feel like that's what I need to
keep demanding of myself and what I need to keep demanding of the
industry.”
Quinto, who is best known for playing a
young Spock in the 2009 Star Trek reboot and its sequel, Star
Trek Into Darkness, said that
early on in his career he could not identify any role models.
“For
me, personally, it's interesting, because I looked around when I got
Star Trek, and I said
to myself, 'Who could I look to for guidance for how to navigate this
path that I'm on?' And there wasn't anybody,” he explained.
“I look around
and say, 'OK, yes, there's a lot of gay actors that are open, many
more now than there were 10 years ago,' but I still feel like I'm
occupying kind of a unique space,” he added.
(Related:
Zachary
Quinto responds to controversial PrEP comments; denies he was
slut-shaming.)