Zachary Quinto News

Think you know the character of Sylar? Think again, Zachary Quinto pretty much told The Los Angeles Times in a recent interview.

"The great thing about my character this year is that he's all over the map in terms of his internal conflict," the actor told the newspaper. "The sort of orders that he's given by certain people who have power over him this season and the situations that that puts him in really, really force him to employ a kind of restraint that you haven't seen him necessarily need to employ."

Quinto also spoke briefly about the show returning.

"It feels like it's emerging into itself... I think that the time that we had away from the show made us that much more grateful to come back and that much more excited to come back 'cause it's been so long since we've been on the air."

As most Heroes fans know by now, Zachary Quinto will be trading in Sylar for Spock next spring, as he takes on this iconic role in J.J. Abrams new Star Trek movie. It's coming out on May 8, 2009.

"I really felt like my relationship to the character was specific to the text I was playing and to the world in which the character is being created right now, this time," Quinto recently said in an interview at the Television Critics Association summer press tour in Beverly Hills, California.

"So I didn't feel beholden to [original Spock portrayer Leonard Nimoy], other than to honor the origins of what he created, obviously. But I think the whole project was based in that philosophy, so it wasn't a problem."

As for the earlier poster of him in costume, as seen above?

"I think it looks great," Quinto said. "I think the colors look really great. And, you know, I think it's a hearkening of what's to come. ... I think it's going to be really cool."

At last week's Grand Slam XVI Sci Fi Summit in Burbank, California, Heroes star Zachary Quinto was interviewed alongside Leonard Nimoy.

Each actor will take on the role of Spock in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek remake, with Quinto receiving the bulk of the screen time. Here are a few excerpts from TV Guide's interview with the stars:

TV Guide: What do you think J.J. brings to Star Trek?
Quinto: Everything. He brings his ability to execute his vision — which is basically unparalleled — a really generous spirit, a lot of respect for the people he works with and the people who work with him, a sense of humor and some mad beat-boxing skills. In between takes, actually.

TV Guide: Is this a crazy movie to promote, because of all the secrecy?
Nimoy: There's always been an issue of trying to protect the secrecy of the next Star Trek movie, whichever one it was. There are people who make it their business to try to get their hands on the script and be able to say, "I got it and I can tell you what's happening." In this particular case it's been a very special effort on the part of those people to break through the security barrier, and as a result the security has been stronger than it ever has been before.

Quinto: I think the speed with which people get their information now makes it more of a problem. The first day I shot the movie, before it was over J.J. came to me with his phone and showed me a picture that he had downloaded from the internet of us standing in the room that we were still shooting in. It was already on the Internet! That's actually what instigated the heightened security.

The next day I showed up and we had floor-length vinyl jackets with hoods [to cover costumes] and golf carts that were completely enclosed in black tarp. That persisted through the entire shoot, even when we were on the lot at Paramount. People were worried about camera phones and digital cameras and it's understandable because there were a couple of times that a background actor or someone who was working on the crew would snap a couple of photos and they would inadvertently end up on the Internet, and that's just a headache for the legal departments.

People think they want to know, but they don't want to know. It's going to ruin the experience for them.

Zachary Quinto recently sat down with the Los Angeles Times. Here are a couple highlights from the interview:

What happened on the Heroes set when the strike came on?
As it became clearer and clearer that that was going to devolve and there was going to be a strike, the tone of things on set just sort of shifted. There was no formal conversation -- we have screenings every Friday on our lunch break of the episode about to air. By that time the strike had already happened...

All of a sudden the writers weren't there. An unexpected, unwanted vacation for everybody.

It's the crew of our show I think about the most -- the people who work the hardest, in terms of their physical contribution and the hours they spend at work. It's so unfortunate how far-reaching the ramifications of this are... The unfortunate need for the sacrifice of individuals to benefit for the group is uncomfortable and painful. The crew doesn't benefit from the outcome of the negotiations. That's a difficult thing for me.

Compounding it is I ended on Heroes on Friday and started on Star Trek on Monday. To be working through this and to be required to work is also really strange. It's a combination of feeling really fortunate and oddly awkward and guilty and weird.

I never did see an account of your Star Trek audition. How was the first meeting?
I had an audition... in April of 2007, and then I went away: I left town two days later for two months. I was in Europe and New York and all over the place. I imagine had I been in Los Angeles it would have been more nerve-racking. But as it was, I was traveling and having this life experience that allowed me to detach from the structure of Los Angeles.

Then, I got back in June on my birthday, and when I was in New York my manager called and said they're moving forward.

You may not have seen a lot of Zachary Quinto on Heroes so far this season. But fans will get their fill of this actor when he stars as Spock in the upcoming Star Trek movie.

With that role in mind, FHM has come out with a limited edition issue that features the actor on its cover. The magazine is only available for purchase here - but we have a couple sneak peaks at its Quinto layout below:

Here's an exclusive look at Zachary Quinto in his role as Spock in the upcoming Star Trek remake.

The Heroes star looks to have been born for this role, doesn't he?

After making his triumphant return to Heroes last week, Zachary Quinto sat down with TV Guide for an interview.

The actor discusses how quickly his career has gone from the depths of Hollywood to the summit...

TV Guide: A year ago, you were just another jobless Hollywood actor. Now you're starring on the white-hot hit Heroes and playing young Spock in the next Star Trek movie. Are you sure you're not dreaming all this?
Zachary Quinto: It's all very dreamlike, though Trek is feeling less so as it draws nearer. We're getting ready to shoot in a month, and I just had my first fitting for my Vulcan ears. It felt incredible, and in that moment there was a huge shift for me. Suddenly it was real, and I was like, "OK! Let's get this thing going!"

TV Guide: In a wild twist on Heroes, your serial-killer character, Sylar, has lost his powers. Will this help humanize the monster?
Quinto: Not really. Sylar's plans for ultimate power have been derailed, but that doesn't give us a chance to know him better. If anything, he's the same guy but even more driven and obsessed and in a place of absolute hunger: "I want my power back! No time to waste!"

During this struggle, he'll align himself with the twins, Maya [Dania Ramirez] and Alejandro [Shalim Ortiz], and they'll go on a journey to New York to find Mohinder [Sendhil Ramamurthy].

TV Guide: Do some fans root for you to slay as many heroes as possible?
Quinto: Oh, yeah! There's a group that calls itself the Sarmy — or Sylar's Army — that's dedicated to the support of my character, and they don't like it when he's disparaged. Their slogan is "Every villain needs a legion of evil supporters." But what's funny is they do great charity work. It's never bad to have an army.

TV Guide: Is it true you were ready to drop out of showbiz when Heroes came along?
Quinto: I was in the depths of despair to the point where I couldn't get out of bed. I was about to turn 30, which is a notoriously tumultuous time for people, and I was dealing with career obstacles that were profound — a real existential crisis. I was asking myself, "What's the point of all this? Why am I even in the game anymore?"

TV Guide: But you'd already had a few cool roles by that time — Tori Spelling's gay BFF on So NoTORIous and CTU analyst Adam Kaufman on Season 3 of 24. Weren't you encouraged by that?
Quinto: So NoTORIous was great fun but had no far-reaching appeal. 24 did have that, but I was an information disseminator who was very expendable on a show that doesn't have a lot of char­acter depth. Until Heroes happened, I'd never played an amazing character on a really great show that a lot of people watched.

How does Heroes stand out from other popular shows on TV? Zachary Quinto - who was mostly absent from last night's season two premiere - says that his series focuses on broad, important issu

"It's not just that people like to talk about our show, it's the themes of the show," Quinto said. "The show is about saving the world. The show is about people waking up to their own power to make a difference.

"It's not like the entire world is talking about the sex scene in the shower at the hospital with the doctors, or the lawyers in the bathroom, or whatever."

"There always is going to be pressure, no matter whether it's the first, second, third, fourth or fifth season," Ventimiglia said.

"I think you have to strive to better yourself and better your characters. But this show always is going to be a big one to make. So I think, if anything, it reminds us not to slow down and not to slack off, to do better and to grow."

A few minutes before the start of the Emmy Awards, a pair of Heroes actors took time for the cameras:

Ali Larter waves to her fans. Hey, don't we know that guy over her shoulder from somewhere?

Zachary Quinto looks a tad less scary here than he does as Sylar.

During the Heroes world tour recently, Zachary Quinto spoke with Canadian newspaper, The National Post. Here's what he had to say...

NP: One of the few things Sylar and Spock have in common is that they're loners. Is that part of what makes you a good fit for those roles?
ZQ: You're asking if I'm a loner? I think it's very important for me to very distinctly separate these two experiences and these two characters. ... I think that's probably more a question for J.J. and Tim Kring. What is it about me or what qualities about me drew them to me for these roles? There is something about the way I carry myself obviously that lends itself to these kinds of characters, but I don't think that means I can't play other kinds of characters as well.

NP: What do you see as your dominant traits as an actor?
ZQ: I like to think that my dominant traits are versatility and a wide range of capacity as an actor, which I think comes from certainly my training and my experience in the theatre, growing up and learning a lot on stage, and learning a lot about style and learning a lot about how to inhabit style and how to embody it.

But again, these are questions that are difficult for me to answer, because I just do my thing. I do it the way I do it, and how people see it or respond to it, I can't have any control over, so it's hard to be objective about it.

NP: When you say inhabit and embody a style, what does that mean?
ZQ: Doing a Tennessee Williams play is very different from doing a Shakespeare play or a Molière play, or Tom Stoppard. There's just different styles of esthetic and of language and of the world that's created. Certainly both the world of Heroes and the world of Star Trek are heightened worlds, and they are both very stylized.

And I think that that's a strength that I have as an actor, is being able to understand those styles and commit to them and exist within the world of them, believably and genuinely. And that's what I can directly trace back to my training and my experience in the theatre.

NP: You were in a Molière play?
ZQ: I went to Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh for acting, and junior year I spent on classics, on Molière and Chekhov and Shakespeare.

Follow our link to read the full interview with this Heroes actor.