Zachary Quinto Talks 'Star Trek' Role, Working With Oliver Stone, and What to Expect From 'Hitman'
By Samantha Yanks | August 27, 2015
Summer in the Hamptons is the perfect getaway for rising star Zachary Quinto. As his high-octane action film Hitman: Agent 47 premieres this weekend, and on a break from filming his third installment as iconic sci-fi star Mr. Spock in Star Trek, Quinto also reveals how working with Oliver Stone in Snowden was a game-changer in his ever-evolving career.
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Happy summer, Zack [sic], and welcome back to the Hamptons. How long have you been coming out this way?
I would say I’m a relative newcomer. I moved to the East Coast when I started doing The Glass Menagerie in December 2012, and I started going to the Hamptons within the last few years.
Do you have a favorite area? Where do you usually stay?
With whomever wants me to stay with them? [laughs] I have spent time in East Hampton, Sagaponack, and Southampton, where I actually rented a house myself last year. I’ve kind of seen the spectrum—I’ve been to parties at those massive beachfront properties that are almost sort of daunting and overwhelming in a way. The thing I like about Southampton is it’s a little more bucolic.
It is a perfect spot to spend a nice amount of time off. You seem to be working nonstop.
It’s pretty unusual. I have just enough time to come back here for a little while.
Work-wise, let’s start with Hitman: Agent 47, which is out this weekend. It’s based on a popular video game. I’m not even a gamer, but I find that world fascinating.
Yes, I’m not really a gamer either. I think the last one I played was on an original Nintendo, but that world is a more profitable industry than the entertainment industry.
Did you have to play the game to really understand your character?
No, I didn’t. From what I understand about the game of Hitman, the character I play is kind of a peripheral guy compared to Rupert Friend’s Agent 47. I just came at it from a perspective of being the antagonist in the movie and tried to flesh out the character from that standpoint.
What did you figure out about your character, John Smith?
When you meet him you’re not really sure where he fits into this landscape. There’s a sort of ambiguity as to what his intentions are or whom he’s serving, then it all becomes clearer at the end that everyone is after the same thing, which is information to genetically modify human beings to make them more powerful and aggressive.
And did the landscape in Germany play into that?
Yes! We shot in Berlin, which is one of my favorite cities in the world. There’s an aggressiveness about Berlin and an edge to the city that I connect with pretty strongly.
Speaking of making connections, you just worked with one of your all-time favorites, Oliver Stone, on this December’s Snowden, the biopic about Edward Snowden. What was that like?
The experience was awesome. I loved working with Oliver Stone. I’ve been a fan of his movies from such a young age. I remember when JFK came out, I was obsessed with it. There’s just something about his brand of storytelling and his style that is so natural. Working with him was a real honor. We got along really well.
I feel like you’re pretty easy to get along with.
Thanks. I try. There’s just something about working with someone who has been through so much in life. He’s so intelligent. And this story is just so perfectly in his wheelhouse.
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You play real-life journalist Glenn Greenwald, who in some ways is one of the heroes in this story.
I have a lot of respect for his passion and his intelligence. He’s an incredibly smart man, and it was really great to get to know his points of view a little bit through playing him. Something Glenn talks a lot about is this idea that it’s easy to go through our lives and to have the sense of “If we are being watched, I don’t have anything to hide. And if [watching us] helps keep us safer, then all right.” The problem with that mentality is that you don’t take into account what could happen in the future. For any number of reasons a person could all of a sudden find himself in the position of being opposed to the government and taking a stand or becoming part of movement that is taking a stand that could be considered confrontational. Then because of this mass surveillance, you have all this information like the “cloud.” I learned a lot about how easy it is to hack into our phones, computers, and [web] cams—which I now have a piece of tape over all the time. It made me not paranoid, just aware of how to communicate and when to be careful. Being a part of something like this film is like looking down the barrel at something.
Forgive me for changing the subject, but looking at your now iconic eyebrows, I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask how filming the third installment of Star Trek is going. You’re on a break here from shooting in Vancouver, but those Spock brows are still intense.
Yeah, I know. I used to be much more self-conscious about that. I used to wear glasses if I was going out or doing press, but now I just sort of let it go. Now that Leonard Nimoy isn’t with us anymore, I feel like carrying the torch fully for the role is important.
Tell me about your relationship with Leonard. You met at ComicCon in 2007, and he was immediately inspired and handpicked you to be the next Spock?
Yeah, I mean director JJ Abrams was a little concerned, obviously, with honoring the history of the franchise, and because Leonard was involved in the first movie, he participated in the process. To my knowledge, I was the only person who auditioned for the role.
Then your friendship with Nimoy evolved...
It was something where he saw some of my work and thought that I was a good pick. Then we met, and our relationship took on a life of its own and we became close. I became close with his wife and his family. Losing him has been really hard, but also in a way beautiful. To be with someone, to experience someone at the end of his life, and to have that life be so well lived and fulfilled, he really left this earth just surrounded by love. I’m not afraid of exploring stuff like death and what life adds up to in the end, so he was a shining example of how to do it right. I feel now like my connection with him is just on a deeper level. It’s much more spiritual.
Does Leonard’s being gone affect how you play Spock?
I have felt very embraced by fans, and people seem to be on board with what I’m bringing to the role. Some of my favorite moments in this film for Spock are some of the quietest and most intimate ones. In the big, huge landscape of action, of fighting, there’s some real depth in these quieter moments that I’m looking forward to bringing to this process, so that’s cool.
And because starring on Broadway, reinvigorating a beloved franchise, and starring in a high-octane action film wasn’t enough, you started a production company, too?
I started Before the Door Pictures in 2008 with two of my college friends, Corey Moosa and Neal Dodson. We are a band of brothers. We rolled up on [director] J.C. Chandor at a crucial moment for all of us, and he brought us Margin Call, which was our first film. We’ve grown with him and also did A Most Violent Year with him. We did a documentary series last year called The Chair, which just won the Television Critics Association Award. Now we have another TV show we just sold and about three films in development—two of which I would potentially star in. But that’s never really been the reason for it. I love producing. It’s been another skill set I’ve enjoyed cultivating and sharpening.
As an actor, your contribution is really significant, obviously, but it’s not overarching. It’s like equity in a company really. It’s different in film and theater. There’s much more ownership in theater as an actor, but your contribution is one of many collaborations that go into making a film. When you’re producing, you get to have a hand in how all those decisions are made and how a set is run. I find it really rewarding to cultivate an environment in which people feel like they can do their best work, and I love the idea of giving new filmmakers the opportunity to have their voices heard—we work almost exclusively with first-time directors. I’m able to use my exposure and my relationships as an actor to help advance their artistic interests. If I weren’t in this position, I don’t think I would have started a production company.
Your level of exposure has certainly been a boon to the Trevor Project, too. You got involved with the suicide prevention hotline on a very personal level.
My relationship with the Trevor Project stemmed from my coming out in 2011, when teen suicides were—and they still are—a huge problem in the LGBT community. When I came out, I decided that I wanted to understand how the organization works on the ground. I didn’t want to be just a face that shows up. I actually went through the training and was on the lifelines for probably seven months while I was living in Los Angeles. That was just such a powerful experience. It made me understand just how powerful the organization really is, the work that they do, and their tireless commitment to making sure they do everything they can to ensure that no more lives are lost.
How did your work for Direct Relief come about? What appealed to you about the organization?
Direct Relief is the highest rated nonprofit organization for transparency and for direct contributions. So if you give a dollar you know where that dollar is going, and they can account for that—in this day and age, that is admirable, and it probably shouldn’t be. I felt really inspired by that and the work they do. They are on the ground, they were immediately involved in the West Africa Ebola outbreak and in the earthquake in Nepal. I would say the power of the Trevor Project is an emotional power, and the power of Direct Relief is really an actual physical power for me.
You seem incredibly thoughtful about your career and how it can positively have an effect on the world around you.
The more you get out there and the more you get co-opted into different things, if you’re just kind of willy-nilly, it can dilute the power of the platform we have as celebrities. So I wanted to hone that and be more specific. Being able to do that has been a really nice aspect of my career.
What a healthy place to be in. Will you bring that refreshing spirit of yours out here to the Hamptons more often?
Yes! Now that I’ve permanently relocated to New York, there’s something about the idea of having somewhere else besides Manhattan to go to. We get out of the city, but to have a place of our own would be ideal, so I’m just now starting to figure that out.
I may have a suggestion or two for you…. In the meantime, you can always stay with my family!
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