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).
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.
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.
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. Then we had two weeks where he did not speak to me—but it was bliss." Frankenheimer also had zero tolerance for Kilmer, dismissing the actor's "You know what I think?" attempts to contribute ideas with "I don't give a f---!"
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.
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.
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).
The jury remains out on Kilmer. There are still directors willing to work with him, but they better be ready for the war of wills that could ensue. On the set of "The Island of Dr. Moreau", his co-star Marlon Brando allegedly informed him, "You confuse your talent with the size of your paycheck." But according to Kilmer, "Often I have been accused of being difficult, when in fact it's a difficult character that I'm playing. (Hollywood) confuses the two. I work hard. I don't know anybody who's good at their job who doesn't get into trouble."