Heroes Star Zachary Quinto Comes Out as a Gay Man

The actor, most known for his role on Heroes and playing Spock in the first film of the new Star Trek movie franchise, has come out of the closet as a gay man.

He hasn't done it with a magazine cover story declaring, "I'm gay," but…

While discussing his work on Broadway in the recent revival of Angels in America, the Pulitzer Prize winning play about the AIDS epidemic, Quinto said, "[A]s a gay man, it made me feel like I—there's still so much work to be done. There's still so many things that need to be looked at and addressed. The undercurrent of that fear and that, you know, insidiousness still is swarming. It's still all around us."

Talking about the upcoming election year, Quinto, star and producer of the new financial thriller Margin Call, wonders about the state of affairs with the rise of the Tea Party happening at the same time as Occupy Wall Street. "[T]here's such tremendous disparity right now," said Quinto, who will also be seen in Ryan Murphy's new FX series, American Horror Story. "It's like, you have the legalization of gay marriage in the state of New York and three months later you have Jamey Rodemeyer killing himself, yet another gay teenager bullied into taking his own life.

"And, you know, again, as a gay man, I look at that and say there's a hopelessness that surrounds it," he continued. "But as a human being, I look at it and say, "Why? Where is this disparity coming from and why can't we as a culture, as a society, dig deeper to examine it?"

Quinto may say he's a "pretty low-key person," but his coming out has the potential to save and heal lives.

Just ask the gay kid watching Star Trek.

UPDATE: Shortly after news of the mag's story hit the net, Quinto posted a message to fans on his website. Here's an excerpt:

"When i found out that Jamey Rodemeyer killed himself—I felt deeply troubled," Quinto wrote. "But when I found out that Jamey Rodemeyer had made an it gets better video only months before taking his own life—I felt indescribable despair."

"I also made an it gets better video last year—in the wake of the senseless and tragic gay teen suicides that were sweeping the nation at the time. But in light of Jamey's death—it became clear to me in an instant 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."