CELEBRITIES
The ‘Star Trek’ actor gets down to Earth in a new drama
‘Star Trek’ actor Zachary Quinto takes a break from stellar travel and comes down to Earth in new drama ‘Aardvark’.
Zachary Quinto knows exactly when his life got on track. It wasn’t when he was cast as Spock in Star Trek (2009), or even when he was cast as the villainous Sylar in the NBC drama Heroes (2006-2010). It was 14 years ago, at the end of a summer he spent in New York City.
“I was 26,” the actor recalled, speaking by telephone from his Manhattan office. “I remember feeling like that was an incredible time. I really had a blast, but by the end of the summer I realised that I wasn’t enjoying myself. I was escaping certain things, and I needed to look at what those things were.”
He returned to Los Angeles and found a therapist. “I had started to realise that patterns of behaviour in my life were not as simple as they seemed,” he recalled. “There were a lot of unresolved traumas and issues under the behaviours.
“There was the death of my father when I was seven,” he continued, “and my relationship with my mother was >>
right up there. It was the beginning of my emergence into adulthood. I really committed to the process. I had the time, and I could afford it.
“Therapy changed my life entirely,” Quinto said. “I hadn’t come out yet publicly. Therapy released me from things that held me back.”
Quinto’s involvement with therapy, which is ongoing, is partly what led him to the role of Josh in the drama Aardvark. The film, which also stars Jon Hamm as Josh’s estranged older brother and Jenny Slate as Josh’s therapist, is scheduled to open in limited release on April 13.
“The film is ultimately about three people lost to themselves,” Quinto said. “They can only discover the deeper truth about themselves from each other. It’s not always tidy or neat. It’s often messy and inappropriate.”
The actor was fascinated by Josh’s life and his choices. “There’s a darkness in the film,” he said, “but there’s also real heart and humour and quirkiness. Josh’s world is dynamic and complex. I liked bringing that to life.”
Like Josh, Quinto has an older brother, Joe, a photographer. The Quinto brothers grew up in Pittsburgh, with a father who was a hairdresser and a mother who worked in an office.
“We’re seven years apart,” Quinto said. “Joe and I weren’t close when we were kids. I was the little brother who wanted to tag along and wasn’t welcome. After our father died, Joe became a kind of disciplinarian. As a kid I saw him in one light, but we became much closer as adults.”
The brothers in Aardvark also are separated by a considerable age difference, but their relationship is dysfunctional.
“Josh’s brother [a television star] made the pretty extreme decision to abandon him,” Quinto said. “I never felt I was missing something my brother could have provided me with.”
Josh’s relationships are complicated by his undiagnosed mental-health issues.
“We don’t know what he is struggling against,” Quinto said. “It may be bipolarity, extreme depression or schizophrenia. He’s not together.”
To reflect the character’s troubles, Quinto chose an unflattering hair style.
“Josh is a real fighter, incredibly committed to his own wellbeing,” he said, “but he doesn’t know how to make himself look cool. He’s one of a kind, like the aardvark.”
For those not up on their animal species, the aardvark — which is seen at the beginning of the movie — is an anteater which has a snout like a pig, ears like a rabbit and a tail like a kangaroo.
Aardvark is the ninth film Quinto has produced for Before the Door Pictures, the company he started with two fellow graduates of Carnegie Mellon University a decade ago. One of them, Margin Call (2011), a drama about the 2008 financial crisis, earned writer/director JC Chandor an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
ANIMAL INSTINCT: The new drama ‘Aardvark’ stars Zachary Quinto and Sheila Vand, right.
Quinto wanted to produce Aardvark because he knew writer/director Brian Shoaf from his college days.
“I’ve read many things Brian has written,” he said. “I felt really drawn to his imagination.”
The actor has a busy slate as a producer. Quinto recently completed an upcoming History Channel documentary series, In Search of … , a revival of the 1977-1982 series which examined unexplained phenomena, and is working on a film with Paramount Pictures and Bad Robot, JJ Abrams’ production company. Also in the works: a television show with writer/ producer/director Ryan Murphy.
“I want to be back on TV as an actor,” he said. “There’s so much exciting going on in that world.”
Quinto is still in demand on the big screen, however, and co-stars with Jodie Foster and Jeff Goldblum in Hotel Artemis, a thriller scheduled to open later this year.
“I play Jeff’s son, a wannabe crime boss,” the actor said. “He’s an easily excitable, rich, spoiled son.”
Also on the radar is at least one more Star Trek movie, a job which became even more resonant for Quinto when Leonard Nimoy, the original Spock, died in 2015. The two men had worked together, as alternate-universe versions of the same character, in Star Trek and Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013).
“Far and away,” he said, “my relationship with Leonard Nimoy was the most influential and powerful experience on a personal level. I never imagined we would become so close and that he would become a father figure to me. It affected who I am as a person.
“I am still incredibly close to his wife, Susan, and his family.” So what’s ahead on the Star Trek front?
Acting gave me a focus and an outlet. It definitely gave me a channel in which I could experience and process a lot of emotions that were bigger than I was
ZACHARY QUINTO
“Quentin Tarantino has come up with an idea, and he’s writing a script,” Quinto said. “Simon Pegg and Doug Jung, who wrote Star Trek: Beyond (2016), are writing a script, and another team of writers is writing a third script. I hope we make more. There’s life for the franchise!”
First on Quinto’s agenda, however, is a Broadway revival
of The Boys in the Band (1968), scheduled to open May 31. “I love nothing more than doing theatre,” said the actor, whose New York credits also include Angels in America (2010), The Glass Menagerie (2013) and Smokefall (2016).
The Boys in the Band, which also will feature Matt Bomer, Jim Parsons and Andrew Rannells, is set in the 1960s and focuses on a group of gay men who gather in a New York apartment to celebrate a friend’s birthday and cut loose, with the help of lots of alcohol.
“As a gay man I’ll be entering into territory which is really socially and politically relevant right now,” Quinto said. “There are aspects of myself I’ve shied away from, so it will be interesting to go into a world that is inhabited by characters who are unapologetically flamboyant and campy and, in the case of my character, self-loathing.”
Since he came out in 2011, Quinto said, he’s been more settled.
“I just turned 40 last year, and I feel more integrated and happier,” he said. “I’m getting into a new phase of life where I want to have more compassion for others and add to their well-being.”
It has taken him a long time to get there. Quinto’s teens were filled with local acting classes, which helped him deal with the loss of his father.
“Acting gave me a focus and an outlet,” he said. “I started at 10. It definitely gave me a channel in which I could experience and process a lot of emotions that were bigger than I was.
“My 20s were spent trying to work,” Quinto continued. “My 30s were spent managing incredible opportunities like Heroes and Star Trek. I got the Spock role two days after I turned 30. The three movies came to an end right before I turned 40. They filled my life with a lot of consistency.
“My life is pretty balanced right now,” he added. “I’m really appreciating structure more and more.”
Now, he is considering another big step: starting a family. “I’m thinking about it,” Quinto said. “I talk about it with my partner [actor/model Miles McMillan] all the time. We’ll see how it goes.”