Best known for playing the pointy-eared one in Star Trek, actor-producer Zachary Quinto gets to grips with the financial meltdown in Margin Call, writes TARA BRADY
IT'S EARLY MORNING in Los Angeles and Zachary Quinto is readying himself for duties aboard the USS Enterprise. We know better than to quiz a cast member from a JJ Abrams' joint, let alone Star Trek 2, let alone Mr Spock, as to the particulars.
As ever, Mr Abrams, a master of the teaser trailer, has his crew and science officer sworn to secrecy.
“Today is actually my first day back at work,” says Quinto cheerfully.
And? “It’s very cool.” And? “I’m very excited. It’ll be a long and fun and wild ride.” Will it be a pointy ear day? “Ha. They’re all ear days.”
The sequel to 2009's $385-million grossing Star Trekreboot will head up next summer's schedule, an appositely intergalactic flourish on a resume that like theoretical warp speed 10, appears to have beamed Mr Quinto into all corners of the universe all at once.
Any cursory channel surf confirms as much: click here, he's the dead deviant homeowner in HBO's American Horror Story, click there, he's Anna Faris's deadbeat vegan boyfriend in What's My Number?
"I'm glad to know that," he says. "You always hope that TV like American Horror Story, that is made with a degree of integrity, will find its audience. But the field is so wide you also half expect it will get lost in this sea of cable and reality shows. I'm glad to hear American Horror Storyhas made it back to Irish TV. That's cool."
He is, of course, to the eternal gaiety of Hibernian Trekkers, half-Irish and lived, for a time, in Galway where he waited tables on Abbeygate Street and appeared in a production of The Bearwith Tintreach Company.
“I would love to get back to Galway,” he says. “It was one of the best trips of my life. Even your accent makes me happy.”
Raised in Pittsburgh by mother Margo – his father Joe died from cancer when Quinto was seven – Quinto has been a star since Catholic school, where he won a national Gene Kelly Award for his early forays into musical theatre.
"I learned to act on stage," says the actor, who has just finished a run in a New York revival of Tony Kushner's Angels in America."I've been waiting for ages to get to a point in my career where I feel established enough to take time out once a year for theatre. So doing a play for four months this year was one of the most challenging and rewarding things I've done. It was really important for me to go back and cultivate that relationship again."
Before the Klingons come? “Exactly.”
He graduated from Carnegie Mellon University's School of Drama in 1999 and quickly found work in American TV staples CSI, Touched by an Angeland Charmed.His 2006 stint as Tori Spelling's gay BF in VH1's So NoTORIousmade him a cult sensation but Sylar, the resident super-villain on Tim Kring's Heroesmade him a household name.
Last October, the actor created headlines when, following an interview with New York Magazine, he became Hollywood's only openly gay leading man. The Spock inheritor has long been an advocate of gay causes but preferred to keep media chitchat to issues surrounding advocacy until the suicide of gay teenager Jamey Rodemeyer changed his mind.
A simple, eloquent statement posted on Quinto’s website sparked a chain reaction: “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.” ABC News Now’s anchor Dan Kloeffler notably followed suit, “for the same reason that Zach decided to come out”.
These are, Quinto admits, strange bipolar times for America’s LBGT equality march.
Since 2009 hate crimes based on sexual orientation are punishable by federal law. Meanwhile, gay Republicans are currently choosing between Mitt Romney (“I believe marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman”), Rick Perry (“There are a whole host of sins, homosexuality being one of them”) and Rick Santorum (“Heck, I even love my mother-in-law. Should we call relationship marriage, too?”).
“I look at certain candidates and it’s sad for me that these people have made it anywhere near a political race,” sighs Quinto. “Obviously, there are grades of perspective here. The Republican race has people like Ron Paul who are socially progressive, and then people like Rick Santorum who is basically like the devil. I’m so incredibly underwhelmed by these people. It’s indicative of a political system and country that’s broken. I don’t know how reparable it is. But its pretty clear Mitt Romney is going to run against Obama and that I’ll be doing everything I can to support our president.”
America's broken system forms the spine of Quinto's first film as a producer. Two years ago the star formed media production company Before the Door Pictures with friends Corey Moosa and Neal Dodson. The imprint had intended to launch with a series of graphic novels and a found-footage rom-com until the screenplay for JC Chandor's Margin Callhappened along.
"We had done a number of short films and we had published some graphic novels," says Quinto. "And we were already working on what was supposed to be our first feature. Then Margin Callarrives and it's pretty clear that – wow, this was the one." Margin Call, a film the New Yorker's David Denby is calling "easily the best Wall Street movie ever made" presents a fictionalised account of the last days of Lehman Brothers. The author's father worked for decades on the trading floor and the taut screenplay doubles up as a handy primer in financial apocalypse.
“It treads a fine line,” agrees Quinto. “But that world doesn’t exceed the audience’s own intellectual capacity. These people don’t necessarily know or understand the sweeping financial structures they are dealing with either. So that becomes part of the story.”
A taut financial crisis thriller, JC Chandor’s screenplay breaks down the complicated actuarial science of bad banking through a series of stand-offs between A-listers and winning character actors. Quinto, who also produced, takes a spot in a cast that includes Demi Moore, Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons, Kevin Spacey and Stanley Tucci.
“You couldn’t ask for a better ensemble,” says Quinto. “You couldn’t ask for better performances. It comes back to the quality of the material. And JC Chandor is a pretty affable guy.”
Made for a teeny $3 million and shot, largely, in the recently vacated premises of a gone-bad trading firm, Margin Callwas embraced as part of a larger countercultural zeitgeist on its US release last October. Penn Badgely, one of Margin Call's stars, has been photographed in the Occupy Wall Street camp. Suddenly the financial world, a sphere previously unmolested by outside interest, was talk of the town.
“We could never have anticipated the way the Wall Street Movement converged at precisely the same time,” says Quinto. “If anything we were worried that people might end up feeling saturated in banking and finance. Or that they would have moved beyond it by the time the movie came out. But there suddenly became an incredible platform about this very issue. People were demanding a voice and demanding explanations. So we were happy to be part of that dialogue.”
Armed with a new grasp of financial structures does the actor have any bright ideas worth a punt?
“No. It’s so big. This isn’t a problem just for the US. This is an issue for all of humanity. We need to sit down and decide where we’re going and what we do with our resources from here. Because what we’re doing now isn’t working.”
Margin Callis out now
HIGH BROW STUFF
In honour of Zachary Quinto’s fine Vulcan unibrow, we present a short, heartfelt roll call of our own planet’s most scintillating synophrys...
GROUNDSKEEPER WILLIE
The school caretaker at Springfield Elementary could have and should have been in Oasis.
BERT FROM SESAME STREET
Ernie’s, ahem, live-in, bed-sharing BF represents the very pinnacle of complete eyebrow continuity.
WILLOW SHIELDS
In keeping with a precedent set by Frida Kahlo, Mexican newcomer Willow evidently says "no" to tweezers. Will landing the role of Primrose Everdeen in Hunger Gameschange Willow's brow willow?
GEORGE W BUSH
Remember Dubya? Ruler of the free world for eight years and owner-occupier of serious caterpillar eyebrows.
COLIN FARRELL
Take that, rest of world. Check out these furry babies. In the event of an oil crisis, please form an orderly queue for a spot in the eternal warmth of Col’s eyebrow fuzz.
