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Like many actors whose first experience is on the stage, Quinto expects his career will take him to New York to work in theater. He is surprised in his senior year when he receives a better response to his Los Angeles showcase performance than the one in New York. Through the Los Angeles showcase, a regular component of drama students' Carnegie Mellon education, he lands an agent and manager and moves to Los Angeles in 1999 after graduation.

His first on-camera job comes a month and a half later: a commercial for Surge, a now-defunct citrus soda. Other commercials follow as he auditions for roles, waits tables between gigs, and lands an occasional TV guest spot, what he calls "a very traditional acting experience in your first years out of school."

Then his agent calls with the kind of news that should end his days as a waiter. Quinto landed a recurring role on an NBC series called The Others, starring 1994 Carnegie Mellon drama alumnus Gabriel Macht. But the euphoria turns into heartbreak not long after: The Others is canceled, and much of Quinto's work is never aired.

Better luck follows, though, when he is cast on the Fox hit 24. Quinto, jubilant for his next big break, plays a tech agent. The part, initially slated for just a few episodes, lasts a full season.

On a roll, he next has a choice between acting in a WB sitcom pilot, Twins, or starring in NBC's So NoTORIous, where he would play the gay best friend of the show's lead, Tori Spelling. The enthusiasm of the So NoTORIous producers wins him over. But disappointment follows: NBC makes the show's pilot but opts against making it a weekly series; Twins, meanwhile, receives a series order. Quinto worries he may have to return to waiting tables. He's saved from that when VH1 orders 10 episodes of So NoTORIous after NBC passes, keeping him employed. But there's a catch. While he waits to see whether VH1 will commission a second season, he can't audition for other opportunities because of his contract with the show.

VH1 ends up canceling So NoTORIous, but by the time that happens, Quinto has missed out on auditioning opportunities for the upcoming season. Jarred by his misfortune, the unemployed actor descends into a funk, even growing a scraggly, rabbinical beard.

After six months pass, he gets word of an audition for a recurring villainous role on NBC's critically acclaimed drama Heroes. "I definitely went into the audition for Heroes working with what I had at that time, which was a lot of unhappiness and frustration and uncertainty about where my career was at that point, where I'd come from, where I was going," Quinto recalls. "I felt, as many actors do, that I was meant to do more than I was given the opportunity to do."

That dark place serves him well. He lands the part of the evil Sylar, with one request from producers—shave the beard. "You realize, as you look back, that everything falls into place exactly as it was meant to," he says. "You can't see it always as it happens, but with perspective and time you realize that So NoTORIous was absolutely the show I was meant to do at the time I did it."

The Heroes character, Sylar, had been envisioned by producers to only appear in the first season and then, most likely, be killed off. But viewers and producers embrace Quinto's portrayal of Sylar. As the forehead-slicing, power-stealing character gains popularity, producers elevate him to a series regular. "I've really fallen for Zach Quinto, and I just think the character is so much fun," Heroes executive producer Tim Kring told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in January 2007. "I just like the idea of him being around for a while."

Wadsworth, who helped coach Quinto for his college auditions and remains a mentor today, says he brings the aggression of his youth to Sylar, but the maturity he's gained since then imbues the character with greater depth. The Heroes writers latched onto that and in the show's third season explored the notion that Sylar might not necessarily be the villain viewers initially suspected.

Not too long after those dark days of bearded joblessness faded away, Quinto receives an email from a friend. A new movie is in the pre-production phase, the latest installment in one of Hollywood's biggest science-fiction franchises. J.J. Abrams, mastermind behind TV's Alias and Lost, is set to direct a Star Trek movie with an all-new cast playing the familiar characters. The email Quinto receives directs him to a Web site where fans have listed a dozen names of actors they think should be considered for the iconic role of the pointed-ear Vulcan. Quinto's name is on the fans' casting wish list.

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