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Val Edward Kilmer (born December 31, 1959) is an American actor. A trained stage actor, Kilmer became well-known in the mid 1980s, after a string of appearances in comedy films, starting with Top Secret! (1984), then the cult classic Real Genius (1985), as well as blockbuster action films, including a role in Top Gun and a lead role in Willow. Described by some as Hollywood's most difficult leading man, the hazel-eyed, lush-lipped, handsome blond Val Kilmer also has his share of advocates to offset the howls of his surprisingly vocal detractors, few of whom, despite their issues with him, would argue that his best work ranks him right up there with Hollywood's elite leading men. He has described his father as "very eccentric and headstrong", so clearly the apple didn't fall far from the tree. Kilmer's intransigence led to the firing of directors Kevin Jarre ("Tombstone" 1993) and Richard Stanley ("The Island of Dr. Moreau" 1996); helmsmen Russell Mulcahy ("The Real McCoy" 1993), Joel Schumacher ("Batman Forever" 1995) and John Frankenheimer ("The Island of Dr. Moreau" 1996) have no use for him; but Oliver Stone ("The Doors" 1991) and Michael Mann ("Heat" 1995) sing the praises of the intelligent and talented man with an admitted "reputation for being difficult, but only with stupid people." An actor of eclectic tastes, he steered his own career path, passing on hits like "Blue Velvet" (1986), "Dirty Dancing" (1987), "In the Line of Fire" and "Indecent Proposal" (both 1993), while choosing to live outside the Hollywood community (first in NYC and later in New Mexico) did not help to capitalize on his breakout success in "Top Gun" (1986). During the 1990s, Kilmer gained critical respect after a string of commercially successful and well reviewed films, including his roles as Jim Morrison in The Doors, Doc Holliday in 1993's Tombstone, and Batman in 1995's Batman Forever. During the early 2000s, Kilmer appeared in several well-received roles, including The Salton Sea, Spartan, and an acclaimed supporting performance in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Kilmer, the second of three sons, was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Gladys (née Ekstadt) and Eugene Kilmer, an aerospace equipment distributor and real estate developer. Kilmer has Scottish, Irish, Sephardic Jewish, Cherokee Native American (from a paternal great-grandmother), Swedish, German and Mongolian ancestry. Kilmer's paternal grandfather was a gold miner in New Mexico; the poet Joyce Kilmer is a second cousin of Kilmer's. Kilmer grew up in the San Fernando Valley with his two siblings, older brother Mark and younger brother Wesley, but says that even as a child growing up in California he did not like it there. His brother Wesley died as a teenager due to to an untreated epileptic seizure in a swimming pool. Kilmer did not think Christian Science's healing was responsible for his brother's death as Wesley was alternated between medical treatments and Christian Science. Kilmer, who was raised a Christian Scientist, attended Chatsworth High School, where he attended with Kevin Spacey, and Mare Winningham as well as Hollywood's Professional's School. He also attended Berkeley Hall School, a Christian Science school in Bel-Air from elementary school up until 9th grade. At the age of seventeen, he was at the time the youngest person to be accepted into Juilliard's drama program. He caught the drama bug early, becoming at age 17, the youngest student at that time to train for the stage at the prestigious Julliard School, where he and his classmates wrote and performed "How It All Began", a play eventually produced at the New York Shakespeare Festival (NYSF) with Kilmer in the lead. Parts in "Henry IV, Part I" (NYSF) and "As You Like It" (at Minneapolis' Tyrone Guthrie Theatre) followed, preceding his Broadway debut opposite Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon in "The Slab Boys" (1983). Soon after, he entered films, proving himself a perfect blend of staunch hero and hot-house heartthrob as the exuberant Elvis Presley-like (the early 1960s model) teen-idol singer warbling "Skeet Surfing" and other tunes in the amiable spy/teen flick spoof "Top Secret!" (1984). He secured teen idoldom as the madcap inventor of "Real Genius" (1985), demonstrating that someone could be cool and sexy and still be a brilliant student, before upstaging hero Tom Cruise in "Top Gun", playing Tom 'Iceman' Kazansky, the cocky F-14 pilot whose technical skills outstrip those of his peers. In 1981, the 6-foot (1.8 m) tall Kilmer co-authored and starred in the play How It All Began, which was performed at the Public Theatre at the New York Shakespeare Festival. Kilmer turned down a role in Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 film, The Outsiders, as he had prior theatre commitments. That same year, his first off-stage acting role (excluding television commercials) came in the form of a television short titled One Too Many, which was an educational drama on drinking and driving; it also starred a young Michelle Pfeiffer. His big break came when he received top billing in the spoof comedy Top Secret!, where he played an American rock and roll star. Kilmer sang all the songs in the film and actually released an album under the film character's name, "Nick Rivers". During a brief hiatus, he backpacked throughout Europe, before going on to play the lead character in the 1985 comedy Real Genius. He turned down roles in Dune and Blue Velvet, before being cast as Naval Aviator "Iceman" in the big budget action film Top Gun, alongside Tom Cruise. Top Gun grossed a total of $344,700,000 worldwide. Following roles in the television films The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Man Who Broke 1,000 Chains, Kilmer played "Madmartigan" in the fantasy Willow; he met his future wife, co-star Joanne Whalley, on the film's set. Kilmer published a book of his poems, "My Edens After Burns," in 1987, and starred in the Colorado Shakespeare Festival production of Hamlet in 1988. In 1989, Kilmer played the lead in both Kill Me Again, again opposite Whalley, and the first for TNT's Billy the Kid. Kilmer's next few projects stumbled badly at the box office as the first rumblings of him as a "difficult" actor began to surface. Nevertheless, his work often stood out from otherwise problematic pictures. He displayed a flair for fantasy heroics as the dwarf-friendly lead in Ron Howard's "Willow" (1988), a lavish but uninvolving fantasy from producer George Lucas that disappointed commercially. Kilmer's leading lady was his future wife Joanne Whalley, and the pair also co-starred in John Dahl's "Kill Me Again" (1989), a knowing spoof of film noir. He won more attention for his uncannily evocative portrait of tortured singer Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone's daft yet deadly biopic "The Doors" (1991), boldly providing his own vocals. Though the film tanked, no one could blame the lead whose Method acting intensity induced him to ask everyone to call him 'Jim' and to give no interviews during filming because he spent the whole time "in character", prompting Stone to acknowledge that the actor "is passionate about his work--with the wrong approach, you may see a side of him you don't like." Kilmer enjoyed a critical hit as the star of Michael Apted's "Thunderheart" (1992), an engrossing crime drama about a part-Sioux FBI agent who must confront his heritage while investigating a murder on an Oglala Sioux reservation. Part-Cherokee, the actor was initially unsatisfied with certain aspects of the story and kept working on them, driving the director crazy with questions along the way. He got his film career back on a commercial track with an acclaimed performance as moribund gunfighter Doc Holliday, stealing the thunder from Kurt Russell's Wyatt Earp while making tuberculosis seem romantic in the surprise hit Western "Tombstone". He also gave a deliciously quirky portrayal of Elvis (complete with a rendition of "Heartbreak Hotel") in "True Romance" (1993) before finally graduating to the A-list when selected by Joel Schumacher to succeed the departing Michael Keaton as the Caped Crusader in "Batman Forever" (1995). Pitted against notorious scene stealers Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones, Kilmer brought a more coiled and pantherish quality to arguably the best installment of the franchise, a blockbuster earning over $200 million worldwide. After several delays, director Oliver Stone finally started production on the film, The Doors, based on the popular band of the same name. Kilmer allegedly memorized the lyrics to all of lead singer Jim Morrison's songs prior to his audition, and sent a video of himself performing some Doors songs to director Stone, which Oliver Stone actually claims was detrimental to his audition. After Kilmer was cast as Morrison, he prepared for the role by attending Doors tribute concerts and reading Morrison's poetry. He spent close to a year before production dressing in Morrison-like clothes, and spent time at Morrison's old hangouts along the Sunset Strip. His portrayal of Morrison was praised and real members of The Doors noted that Kilmer did such a convincing job that they had trouble distinguishing his voice from Morrison's. However, Doors keyboardist, Ray Manzarek, did not share the same enthusiasm of how Morrison was portrayed by director Oliver Stone's interpretation. In the early 1990s, Kilmer starred in the mystery thriller Thunderheart, action comedy The Real McCoy and again teamed with Top Gun director Tony Scott to play Elvis in True Romance, which was written by Quentin Tarantino. In 1993, Kilmer played Doc Holliday in the western Tombstone alongside Kurt Russell, in what some say is one of Kilmer's finest performances. 1995 saw Kilmer star in Wings of Courage, a 3D IMAX film, and in one of his biggest roles, playing Batman in the big budget Batman Forever, which also starred Tommy Lee Jones, Jim Carrey and Nicole Kidman. The film was a success at the box office, despite receiving mixed reviews. That same year, Kilmer starred opposite Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in Heat, which is now considered one of the best crime/drama films of the 1990s. In 1996, he appeared in a largely unknown film, Dead Girl, and starred alongside Marlon Brando in the poorly received The Island of Dr Moreau. That year, Kilmer starred alongside Michael Douglas in the thriller The Ghost & the Darkness. The next year he played Simon Templar in the popular action film, The Saint. In 1998, he lent his voice to the animated film The Prince of Egypt, before starring in the independent film Joe the King (1999) and playing a blind man in the drama/romance At First Sight, which he described as of then, the hardest role he had ever had. True to form, Kilmer went on to violate standard star protocol by accepting a supporting role as a professional thief working with Robert De Niro and pursued by Al Pacino in "Heat", a Michael Mann-directed cop film that delighted critics. Mann gushed, "He is right up there with Al and Bobby in his drive for specificity. You can see in his work the elevated ambition, the high order of expectation, he places on himself." However, Mann was a lone voice of praise from the directors encountering Kilmer in the mid-90s. Schumacher happily allowed him out of his contract to play Batman, replacing him quickly with George Clooney for "Batman & Robin" (1997), and the utter lack of public distress on the part of Warner Bros. spoke volumes. The director refused to mince words: "He was rude and inappropriate. He was childish and impossible. I was forced to tell him that this would not be tolerated for one more second. In December 1993, Batman Forever director Joel Schumacher had seen Tombstone, and was most impressed with Kilmer's performance as Doc Holliday. Schumacher felt for him to be perfect for the role of the Caped Crusader, though at the time, the role was still Michael Keaton's. In July 1994, Michael Keaton decided not to return for a third Batman film after 1992's Batman Returns, due to "creative differences." Joel Schumacher supported Keaton's reason, saying "some people don't want to play superheroes the rest of their life. Even Sean Connery left James Bond." William Baldwin (previously worked with Schumacher on Flatliners) was reported to be a top contender, though just days after Keaton dropped out, Kilmer was cast. Kilmer took the role without even knowing who the new director was and without reading the script (possibly thinking Tim Burton was still set to direct). Kilmer first learned that he was offered the role of Batman while he was literally in a bat cave in Africa, doing research for The Ghost and the Darkness (1996). In February 1996, Kilmer decided not to return for a sequel (1997's Batman & Robin with George Clooney replacing Kilmer), feeling (much as Michael Keaton had when he vacated the role) that Batman was being marginalized in favor of the villains. Kilmer went on to do The Saint with a salary of $6 million (triple the amount of his contract for Batman Forever). When asked why he didn't return for a fourth installment, Kilmer said he liked the characterization of Simon Templar better than Bruce Wayne. Kilmer commented "Simon is a literary character who uses his wit, and not violence. Batman is a real screwed-up guy who has hustled an entire city, and now he's running around in a cape. What's it all about?" Kilmer's ability to don distinctly different personas from part to part is an aspect of his craft that makes him particularly proud. In Stephen Hopkins' "The Ghost and the Darkness" (1996), he stripped away the many layers of engineer John Patterson's reserve to embrace the character's raw emotions, demonstrating once again his incredible range as an actor. His penchant for casually slipping into different voices and guises led him to choose the role of Simon Templar, "The Saint" (1997), over another turn inside the Batsuit. Though hopes for establishing a franchise were high, the ridiculously implausible story doomed Leslie Charteris' debonair detective to inhabit yet another sub-par movie. Kilmer managed to have some fun while trying to dispel his negative image both on the set (where he was good as gold) and during press junkets promoting the picture (where he was sometimes brilliantly unintelligible). By 1999--after voicing Moses in DreamWorks debut animated feature "The Prince of Egypt" (1998)--Kilmer was all about putting his bad boy image to rest—including playing the doting dad to his two children for journalists and ditching Hollywood for Pecos, New Mexico--during promotion for the mawkish romance "At First Sight," in which he played a blind man romancing Mira Sorvino whose life is upended when his vision is restored (based on a true life story by the real-life "Awakenings" doctor, Oliver Sacks). But while demonstrating his good guy status, Kilmer also defended the creative reasons for his on-set intensity and disputed Schumacher and Frankenheimer's comments as frequently exaggerated, often untrue and always vindictive. Kilmer's first role in 2000 was in the big budget Warner Bros. box office failure Red Planet. That same year, he had a supporting role in the film Pollock and hosted Saturday Night Live for the first time. During his SNL hosting, he spoofed his role from Top Gun in a skit titled "Iceman: The Later Years", in which he is now out of the Navy and in training with a civilian airliner, however he is unable to fathom that his airline co-pilots are not as gung-ho as his Navy comrades. Kilmer's skit was also a joke that many retired fighter pilots are only able to find work as airline pilots. In 2002, he starred in the thriller The Salton Sea, which was generally well-reviewed, but received only a limited release. The same year, he teamed with his True Romance co-star, Christian Slater, and the two starred in the low budget film, Hard Cash, also known as Run for the Money. That intensity was used to good ends in 2000 by "Pollack" director-star Ed Harris, who cast Kilmer in a small supporting turn as artist Willem DeKooning, but the actor misstepped when he took the lead as an astronaut on Mars in the seemingly commercial but oxygen-deprived sci-fi vehicle "Red Planet" (2000). By the time he commenced work on the neo-noir thriller "The Salton Sea" (2002)--which starts with the murder of Kilmer's wife at the Salton Sea and continues into the underbelly of L.A. where Kilmer becomes entangled, physically and mentally, in much bad business--the actor confessed that his reputation--undeserved in his eyes--preceded him and caused unnecessary problems with his colleagues. After a few little seen turns in low-profile projects, Kilmer returned to the limelight with his convincing--if somewhat Jim Morrison-like--portrayal of '70s and '80s porn king John C. "Johnny Wadd" Holmes for the true-life crime drama "Wonderland" (2003), based on the porn actor's alleged involvement in the bloody drug-related murders on Los Angeles' Wonderland Avenue in 1981. Kilmer was appropriately dazed, drugged and delusional in his turn as the morally repugnant Holmes in a "Roshomon"-like telling of the tale, but despite that fact that his was the standout performance in this otherwise disappointing version of the real-life events, his acting also had a familiar been-there, done-that feeling. In 2003, Kilmer starred alongside Kate Bosworth in the drama/thriller Wonderland, as well as appearing in The Missing, where he again worked with Willow director Ron Howard. The next year, he starred in Spartan, where he played a United States government secret agent who is assigned the task of rescuing the kidnapped daughter of the President. He received Delta Force-like training in preparation for the role. Subsequently, he had a role in the drama, Stateside, and starred in the thriller Mindhunters, which was filmed in 2003 but not released until 2005. He also appeared in the big budget Oliver Stone production, Alexander, which received mixed reviews. Also in 2004, Kilmer returned to the theatre to play Moses in a Los Angeles musical production of The Ten Commandments: The Musical, produced by BCBG founder Max Azria. The poorly received production played at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood. Kilmer had previously played Moses in the animated film The Prince of Egypt. After receiving positive reviews as a maverick government agent trying to recover a politico's kidnapped daughter in writer-director David Mamet's crime drama "Spartan" (2004) Kilmer was tapped to star as Moses in a controversial stage musical version of "The Ten Commandments" in 2004, a glossy production that struck many as having the appearance of a Hollywood parody. The musical was forced to cut back performances at Los Angeles' Kodak Theater for retooling following scathing reviews. Meanwhile, Kilmer had a brief appearance in hit maker Renny Harlin’s “Mindhunters” (2005), playing an FBI instructor who sends a team of agents-in-training for an exercise that turns much too real. A critical drubbing ensued. Kilmer redeemed himself with a highly entertaining turn as a gay but tough and capable private detective who find himself in an unlikely partnership with a not-so-bright petty thief (Robert Downey, Jr) in writer-director Shane Black's clever action-noir buddy film tribute/pastiche "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" (2005). Kilmer was in negotiations with Richard Dutcher (a leading director of Mormon-related films) to play the lead role in a film entitled Prophet: The Story of Joseph Smith, although the project never materialized. Kilmer performed in The Postman Always Rings Twice on the London stage from June to September of 2005. In 2005, he starred in the action-comedy film Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. His performance was praised and the film was well reviewed, but the film received only a limited release. It later won the award as "Overlooked Film of the Year" from the Phoenix Film Critics Society. In 2006 he reunited with director Tony Scott a third time for a supporting role opposite Denzel Washington in the box-office hit Deja Vu. In 2007, he guest-starred in hit TV series Numb3rs episode "Trust Metric" as torture expert Mason Lancer. He will also star in the Lewis and Clark film opposite Bill Pullman. He was working on writing the movie about the life of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Christian Science Monitor in 2005. He is the voice of KITT for the Knight Rider TV pilot movie which aired on February 17, 2008 on NBC. He dated supermodel Cindy Crawford in the 1990s. They had a big fight over her hat advertising a bar whose owner Kilmer disliked. He admitted that he was being unreasonable while Cindy was very comfortable with advertising. Kilmer was married to Joanne Whalley, an actress and former lead singer of Cindy & the Saffrons, from March 1988 to February 1996. The two met while working together on the film Willow. They shared two children, daughter Mercedes, born in 1991, and son Jack, born in 1995. Warwick Davis, Kilmer's co-star from the 1988 fantasy Willow, in his audio commentary for the film described Kilmer as a very funny man and a hard working, dedicated actor. Kilmer is also an avid musician, and will be releasing a CD in the fall of 2007, proceeds of which will go to his charity interests. Following their appearance together in Top Gun, Kilmer and co-star Tom Cruise reportedly have taken their on-screen conflict off-screen. Reports have classified the two as holding a vitriolic hatred of one another, with Kilmer even refusing to participate in a charity beach volleyball game starring the movie's cast with Cruise on the grounds that he was "dangerous". Other actors have also noted that he prepares for his roles so extensively and meticulously, it is often done to the chagrin of cast and crew (although many have argued that this should be seen as a tremendous quality rather than a flaw). Kevin Jarre, the original director of Tombstone, said that Kilmer once told him, "I have a reputation for being difficult. But only with stupid people." In addition, on the set of The Island of Dr. Moreau, he and the director, John Frankenheimer, had an explosive argument on-set, after which Frankenheimer stated he would never work with Kilmer again. Kilmer owns a huge ranch in New Mexico where he hunts, hikes, fishes, and raises buffalo. Kilmer is also involved with The Wildlife Center of New Mexico and assists in rescuing animals and releasing them on his ranch. |
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