'Star Trek's' Zachary Quinto Admits He Is Gay

Zachary Quinto, best known for starring on the TV series Heroes and as Spock in the most recent Star Trek movie, has come out of the closet. He reveled that he was gay in an interview with New York magazine.

He didn't make a big deal about the way he came out. He just slipped it casually into the interview.

Quinto recently wrapped an eight-month stint in an Off Broadway restaging of Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer prize winning play “Angels in America,” and discussed one of the play’s main topics, the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. He revealed that he felt fortunate to not have witnessed it firsthand.

“As a gay man, [the play] 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 said in the interview.

The 34-year-old actor has never addressed his sexuality in the press although there has been much speculation. In the interview Quinto discussed how he was inspired to come out by a 14-year-old gay high school student, Jamey Rodemeyer, who was bullied to death.

After the story hit the Internet, Quinto posted a message on his website discussing Rodemeyer and his decision to publicly acknowledge his sexuality:

"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.”