Best known for his portrayal of rock icon Jim Morrison, in the movie The Doors, Val Kilmer began his professional acting career on the stage, where he continues to perform. His film debut was in the spoof, Top Secret, (1984) starring as rock idol Nick Rivers. He did his own singing in the movie, and even cut an album as Rivers. He also provided the voice for some of the songs in The Doors. Among other notable films Kilmer has made are Top Gun (1986), True Romance (1993), Tombstone (1993), Batman Forever (1995), The Saint (1997), and At First Sight (1999).
Kilmer was born on December 31, 1959, in Los Angeles, CA, and studied acting at Hollywood's Professional School and later became the youngest student to be accepted into Juilliard's Drama Department in New York. Kilmer is divorced and the father of two children. He is a cousin of poet Joyce Kilmer, who wrote the poem "Trees."
Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert's recollection of Val Kilmer's performance in the 1992 Thunderheart provides a fitting introduction to this intuitively gifted yet oft-underappreciated actor, by zeroing in on the strength at the core of Kilmer work. "Only... twenty minutes into the movie," Ebert writes, "...did I recognize... I had been watching Kilmer all along... [His] anonymity was not a trick of makeup or lighting... [there] is something inside Kilmer that seems to conceal him; he is this straight-arrow, conservative, by-the-numbers FBI agent [in Thunderheart], just as in The Doors he was the Dionysian rock druggie Morrison... [and] there is no common reference between the two characters. He is so inside the one... you cannot get a glimpse of the other. If there is an award for the most unsung leading man of his generation, Kilmer should get it. In movies as different as Real Genius, Top Gun, Top Secret!, and Billy the Kid, he has shown a range of characters so convincing that it's likely most people, even now, don't realize they were looking at the same actor."
Indeed. Kilmer's chameleon-like ability to plunge fully and breathlessly into his characters represents both the gift that catapulted him to fame in the mid eighties, and that which - by its very nature of anonymity - held him back from megastardom for some time. (Compare it with the work of his Hollywood mentors from earlier generations, such as Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson and Clint Eastwood, who developed trademark personae onscreen and can be instantly recognized in almost any role). Such an ability - doubtless, the result of exhaustive, heavily-disciplined training and rehearsal - also explains Kilmer's alleged on-set reputation as a perfectionist (which caused a number of major directors to supposedly tag him as 'difficult'), but the results are typically so electric that Kilmer's influx of assignments has never stopped. He is also extraordinarily selective about projects. Trying valiantly to maintain a firm hold on his career, he turned down offers for box office blockbusters including Blue Velvet, Dirty Dancing, and Indecent Proposal for personal and artistic reasons.
A Los Angeles native, Kilmer acted in high school with friend Kevin Spacey before attending the Hollywood Professional School and Juilliard. He appeared on the New York stage and in Shakespeare festivals before his cinematic debut as the rock idol Nick Rivers in the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker spy spoof Top Secret! (1984). An absurd role which Kilmer plays with complete sincerity; it reveals genuine musical talent and Kilmer achieves complete credibility as a rock star. Throughout the eighties, Kilmer played as diverse an assortment of roles as could be found: he was the goofy, playfully sarcastic, egghead roommate and mentor to Gabe Jarrett in Martha Coolidge's Real Genius, the cocky "Ice Man" in Top Gun, and warrior Madmartigan in the Ron Howard/George Lucas fantasy Willow (1988).
Kilmer's cinematic breakthrough arrived in 1991, for his portrayal of rock icon Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone's The Doors; some speculated that Stone hired Kilmer solely on the basis of the musical gifts showcased seven years prior in Top Secret!. As the philosophical, death-obsessed rocker (and druggie) Morrison, Kilmer performed a number of the Doors songs on the soundtrack, sans dubbing. He played other American icons in his next two films - gunslinger Doc Holliday in Tombstone and the spirit of Elvis in True Romance; both did remarkable business at the box office. Due to his persistent need for an on-set dialogue with his directors, Kilmer clashed with Michael Apted on the set of Thunderheart (1992) and Joel Schumacher on the set of Batman Forever. He openly refused to repeat the Bruce Wayne role for Batman and Robin (1997) (which would have re-united him with Schumacher) and thus broke his superhero contract.
Instead, Kilmer headlined Michael Mann's 1995 Heat with two legends, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. This time around, he met with a more accommodating (or at least more tolerant) director, Michael Mann. Working with another acting veteran, he co-starred with Michael Douglas for the hunting adventure The Ghost and the Darkness. Unfortunately, his next few films were disappointments, particularly The Saint and The Island of Dr. Moreau. He switched gears a few times with little success, turning to romantic drama in At First Sight and to science fiction in Red Planet, but neither fit his dramatic intensity. He was especially ill-suited for the role as the drunken dad in Joe the King.
After lending his booming voice to the part of Moses in the Dreamworks animated film The Prince of Egypt (1998), Kilmer appeared in The Salton Sea (1991) as a tormented drug addict. In 2003, he lined up quite a few projects, including the crime thriller Mindhunters and the drama Blind Horizon. In the same year he earned a starring role as another aggressive American icon, John Holmes ("the John Wayne of porn"), for the thriller Wonderland (2003). That project (inspired by Holmes's autobiography Porn King and other accounts of the actor's sordid life) had rolled around Hollywood for many a year; it recounts the drug-related Wonderland murders in which Holmes was implicated, but does so Rashomon-style, from numerous vantage points. Dreary, unspeakably depressing, and confusing as well, the picture alienated all but the least discerning of viewers. The Washington Post's Stephen Hunter asked, "Why does this film exist? Sometimes there is no why, there's only a how. This is how: overblown, overheated, overdirected, overacted, overlong and over here, in the local bijoux. "
That same fall, Kilmer re-teamed with Ron Howard for the director's lackluster Searchers retread, The Missing (2003). He also re-collaborated with Oliver Stone (for the first occasion since The Doors) in the director's disappointing historical epic Alexander (2004), opposite Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins, and Colin Farrell. He returned to form (and a leading role) in 2005, with the comedy-thriller Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang. Kilmer (per his trademark ability) once again cut way against type, this time as a flagrantly (and aptly named) homosexual detective, Gay Perry, who lives and works in Tinseltown. When it opened in October 2005, the picture drew an avid response from critics and lay viewers alike, and brought in solid box office returns.
The actor packed in an astonishingly full schedule throughout 2006, with no less than six onscreen appearances through the end of that year, in large and small-scaled productions - all extremely unique. He returned to his 1998 Dreamworks part with the lead role of Moses in Robert Iscove's stage musical The Ten Commandments, mounted at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood. Then, in a most unusual move that recalled Richard Gere's work for Akira Kurosawa and Burt Lancaster's work for Luchino Visconti, Kilmer went cross-cultural, by joining the cast of Polish director Piotr Uklanski's Summer Love (2006), screened at the Venice International Film Festival. It marks the first "Polish spaghetti western" and gracefully sends up the genre; Kilmer appears as "The Wanted Man." The Disney studios sci-fi-action thriller Deja Vu teams Kilmer and Denzel Washington (under the aegis of Kilmer's former Top Gun cohorts, Tony Scott and Jerry Bruckheimer) as feds who travel back in time to stop a terrorist's (Jim Caviezel) attempt to blow up a ferry. He also voiced the character of Bogardus in Marc F. Adler and Jason Maurer's family-friendly animated adventure Delgo.
In 2008, NBC revived the classic series Knight Rider, and needed a distinct voice to play the super-intelligent car. Kilmer stepped in to play the iconic role, but he also signed on for numerous other simultaneous projects. He signed on to appear in The Dirt and The Steam Experiment, as well as Werner Herzog's remake of Bad Lieutenant.
Kilmer met British actress Joanne Whalley on the set of Willow in 1987; they married the following year and teamed up onscreen in John Dahl's Kill Me Again (1989). The couple had two children before the marriage ended in 1996.
Val Edward Kilmer[1] (born December 31, 1959) is an American actor. Originally a stage actor, Kilmer became popular 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.
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.[3] Kilmer's paternal[citation needed] grandfather was a gold miner in New Mexico;[4] the poet Joyce Kilmer is a second cousin of Kilmer's.[5] Kilmer grew up in the San Fernando Valley with his two siblings, older brother Mark and younger brother Wesley,[6] but says that even as a child growing up in California he did not like it there.[citation needed] Kilmer, who was raised a Christian Scientist,[7] 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 Beverly Hills, CA, from nursery school until graduation from the 9th grade. At the age of seventeen, he was at the time the youngest person to be accepted into Juilliard's drama program.[8][9]
His brother Wesley died as a teenager due to an epileptic seizure in a swimming pool. Kilmer did not think Christian Science treatment was responsible for his brother's death as Wesley was alternated between medical treatments and Christian Science.[10]
Career
1980s
In 1981, Kilmer co-authored and starred in the play How It All Began,[11] 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.[12] 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;[13] 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".[14]
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,[15] before being cast as NavalAviator "Iceman" in the big budget action film Top Gun, alongside Tom Cruise. Top Gun grossed a total of $344,700,000 worldwide.[16] 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 in TNT's Billy the Kid.
1990s
After several delays, director Oliver Stone finally started production on the film, The Doors, based on the popular band of the same name. Kilmer 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. Stone wasn't impressed with the tape, but Paul Rothchild (the original producer of The Doors) said "I was shaken by it" and suggested they record Kilmer in the studio. After Kilmer was cast as Morrison, he prepared for the role by attending Doors tribute concerts and reading Morrison's poetry.[17] 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. Paul Rothchild played Val's version of 'The End' for Robby Krieger, and he told him "I'm really glad they got 'The End'. We never got a recording of that live with Jim and now we've got it." However, Doors keyboardist, Ray Manzarek, was less than enthusiastic with how Morrison was portrayed by director Oliver Stone's interpretation.[citation needed] 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 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.[21] Batman co-creator Bob Kane said he felt Kilmer was the best actor to portray Batman.
In July 1994, Michael Keaton decided not to return for a third Batman film after 1992's Batman Returns,[22] due to "creative differences."[21]William Baldwin (who previously worked with Schumacher on Flatliners) was reported to be a top contender, though just days after Keaton dropped out, Kilmer was cast.[22] 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).[21] 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). Released in June 1995, Batman Forever was a success at the box office,[23] despite receiving mixed reviews from critics.[24]
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.[25] Kilmer went on to do The Saint with a salary of $6 million (triple the amount of his contract for Batman Forever).[25] 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?"
"I was told that Val was difficult and wasn't [right] for me," says Schumacher.[26]
2000s
Kilmer's first role in 2000 was in the big budget Warner Bros. box office disaster[27]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. In 2002, he starred in the thriller The Salton Sea, which was generally well-reviewed,[28] but received only a limited release.[29] 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.
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.[30] Subsequently, he had a role in the drama, Stateside, and starred (again with Slater) in the thriller Mindhunters, which was filmed in 2003 but not released until 2005. Kilmer next appeared in the big budget Oliver Stone production, Alexander, which received poor reviews.[31] 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.[32] The production played at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood. Kilmer had previously played Moses in the animated film The Prince of Egypt. Finally in 2004, Kilmer appeared in an episode of Entourage where he played a tripped-out Sherpa shaman whose primary source of income was the growing, harvesting and distributing high-quality marijuana all under a guise of hippy-dippy metaphysical insights.
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.[33] Kilmer performed in The Postman Always Rings Twice on the London stage from June to September 2005.[34] In 2005, he co-starred with Robert Downey, Jr in the action-comedy film Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. His performance was praised and the film was well reviewed,[35] but the film received only a limited release.[36] 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 Déjà Vu. In 2007, he guest-starred in hit TV series Numb3rs episode "Trust Metric" as torture expert Mason Lancer. In 2008, Kilmer starred alongside Stephen Dorff in the Sony and Stage 6 film Felon. The film was given only a limited theatrical release in New York and Los Angeles in 2008, but it developed into a success secondary to positive word of mouth on DVD and pay per view where it more than quadrupled its production budget.
Kilmer is currently working on a possible sequel to 1985's Real Genius. He stars at the moment in a thriller from Michael Oblowitz who called Mr. Nobody, he portrayed in the movie an Police Officer.[37]
In keeping with tradition established by the original Knight Rider series and original KITT actor William Daniels, Kilmer was uncredited for the role on-screen.
Personal life
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.[38] They have two children, daughter Mercedes, born in 1991, and son Jack, born in 1995.
He dated supermodel Cindy Crawford in the 1990s. A noted incident in their dating life involved Crawford's advertising for a bar where Kilmer did not approve. He admitted being unreasonable.[10]
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 released a CD in the fall of 2007, proceeds of which went to his charity interests.
Other actors have noted that he prepares for his roles extensively and meticulously. 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."[39]Irwin Winkler (director of At First Sight) talked about his decision to hire Val. "I'd heard the stories, so I checked him out. I called Bob DeNiro and Michael Mann, who'd worked with him on "Heat', and they both gave him raves... I had a wonderful experience in spite of all the naysayers." Jeffrey Katzenberg (director of Prince of Egypt) talks about the actor. "Val was one of the first people cast in The Prince of Egypt. He was there every step of the way; patient, understanding, and phenomenally generous with his time... (negative stories) have not a scintilla of credibility in my life. It's not possible for someone to be more conscientious, more devoted, more generous, more collaborative."
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.[40] Kilmer even refused to participate in a charity beach volleyball game with Cruise on the grounds that he was, quote, "dangerous", although Kilmer is noted to have knocked out Cruise when a fistfight between the two developed during the filming of Top Gun.[40]
Kilmer owns a ranch in New Mexico, where he hunts, hikes, fishes, and raises buffalo.[10] Kilmer is also involved with The Wildlife Center of New Mexico and assists in rescuing animals and releasing them on his ranch.
He briefly flirted with running for Governor of New Mexico in 2010, but in the end declined to run.[42] He made a donation to Ralph Nader's 2008 presidential campaign.[43] On January 30, 2009, Kilmer was chosen to be the King of Bacchus, a parading Krewe in New Orleans, who in 1969, began the tradition of having celebrities ride in their parade as King.[44]
^ State of California. California Birth Index, 1905-1995. Center for Health Statistics, California Department of Health Services, Sacramento, California. Lists his birth name as simply "Val." At Ancestry.com
^Kennedy, Dana (April 21, 2002). "A Long-Lingering Grief That Serves a New Role". The New York Times: p. 54. ISSN7143622. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/21/movies/21KENN.html. Retrieved October 24, 2009. "Despite the passage of time, Mr. Kilmer, 42, is still haunted by his brother's death. "He was a genius," Mr. Kilmer says of Wesley, who was 15 and an aspiring filmmaker when he died. His brother was so talented, Mr. Kilmer says, he could have been another Steven Spielberg or George Lucas."
^ abcdChuck Klosterman's interview in his essay Crazy things seem normal, normal things seem crazy collected in the New Kings of Nonfiction, edited by Ira Glass
