Zachary Quinto feels like he occupies a "unique space" as a gay actor.
The 38-year-old star – who’s best known for his roles as Sylar on the sci-fi drama series ‘Heroes’, and Spock in the rebooted ‘Star Trek’ – has admitted that as a gay actor, he feels there are very people who can help guide his career.
He said: "For me, personally, it’s interesting, because I looked around when I got ‘Star Trek’, and I said to myself, ‘Who could I look to for guidance for how to navigate this path that I’m on?’ And there wasn’t anybody.
"I look around and say ‘OK, yes, there’s a lot of gay actors that are open, many more now than there were 10 years ago.’ But I still feel like I’m occupying kind of a unique space."
Despite this, Zachary counted fellow actor Leonard Nimoy – who previously starred as Spock and died, aged 83, earlier this year – among his closest friends in the showbiz industry, saying he considered him to be "like family".
He told the Daily Telegraph newspaper: "I recognised a lot of qualities in him that I aspired to and I found him incredibly generous and intelligent and compassionate and funny."