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.''