Val Kilmer net worth is $25 Million. Also know about Val Kilmer bio, salary, height, age weight, relationship and more …

Val Kilmer Wiki Biography

Val Edward Kilmer was born on 31st December 1959, in Los Angeles, California, USA. He is an actor who rose to prominence in 1980s after landing notable roles in the films “Top Gun“ (1986), “Willow“ (1988) and others. Val Kilmer has been accumulating his net worth as an actor since 1977.

How rich is Kilmer? Under the latest estimations it was announced that the total size of Val Kilmer‘s net worth is $25 million.

To give some background facts about Kilmer, he was raised in the San Fernando Valley. The parents of the boy divorced when he was 9 years old. He was educated at Berkeley Hall School, Christian Science School, Chatsworth High School, Hollywood Professional School and Juilliard School’s Drama Division. Val Kilmer was seeking to become an actor from adolescence, which later helped him to accumulate the huge amount of his net worth.

Concerning his career, he began as a stage actor, debuting with a main role in the play “How It All Began” (1981) at the Public Theatre during the New York Shakespeare Festival. Later, he took off-Broadway roles including in “The Slab Boys” (1983). In addition to this, he appeared in various television commercials, and the educational television series “One Too Many” (1983). His major breakthrough was landed in the action comedy film “Top Secret!” (1984), directed by Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams and David Zucker, which was well evaluated by critics, and the box office grossed $20 million, so the lead actor Kilmer proved to be worthy of applause and main roles. In fact, he has created roles in more than 70 feature films up to date, which have increased the net worth of Val Kilmer significantly.

Val has won three awards, including a CableACE Award for Best Actor in a Movie or Miniseries for his role in “The Man Who Broke 1,000 Chains” (1987), Prism Award for the Best Performance in a Theatrical Feature Film for his appearance in “The Salton Sea” (2002), and Satellite Award for the Best Supporting Actor in Motion Picture for the character created in “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” (2005). It should be noted that the actor was nominated for MTV Movie Awards and Saturn Award for the roles landed in the films “The Doors” (1991), “Tombstone” (1993), “Batman Forever” (1995) and “Heat” (1995). However, several roles were considered as complete failures and received nominations for the Golden Raspberry Awards. These were the roles of Montgomery in “The Island of Dr. Moreau” (1996), Simon Templar in “The Saint” (1997), and Philip II of Macedon role in “Alexander” (2004). Regardless, all have contributed to his net worth.

Currently, Kilmer is working on upcoming productions including the miniseries “The Spoils Before Dying” created by Matt Piedmont, and feature film “Weightless” directed by Terrence Malick. Even though Val Kilmer has the reputation of being a difficult personality to work with, some directors such as Irwin Winkler, and co-stars including Warwick Davis and Bob De Niro claim that he is a dedicated and hard-working actor.

Some facts about his private life: Kilmer has been married once to the actress Joanne Whalley (1988 – 1996). The family has two children.

IMDB Wikipedia $25 Million 1959 6 ft (1.83 m) Actor Actors Anthony Edwards Batman Batman films Batman Forever Berlin Bob De Niro Calexico California Cinema of the United States Colorado River David Ellison David Zucker December 31 Edward Val Kilmer Film Film producer Film soundtracks Films Irish American Irwin Winkler Jack Kilmer January 1 Jerry Zucker Jim Abrahams Joanne Whalley Joanne Whalley (m. 1988–1996) Justin Marks Kelly McGillis Kiss Kiss Bang Bang Los Angeles Matt Piedmont Mercedes Kilmer Musician Neo-noir Niland Robert De Niro Salton City Salton Sea Salton Sea Beach Santa Monica Scottish American Skydance Productions Southern California Television Producer Terrence Malick The Island of Dr. Moreau the Saint Tom Cruise Top Gun Top Secret! United States United States Navy United States of America Val Val Edward Kilmer Val Kilmer Val Kilmer Net Worth. American film directors Voice Actor Warwick Davis Willow

Val Kilmer Quick Info

Val Kilmer Trademarks

1. Deep resonant voice
2. Pretty-boy looks
3. Known for his meticulous detail and precision when preparing characters. This is often to the chagrin of the actors and filmmakers he is working with.
4. He rubs the first two fingers of his right hand together. Particularly in tense scenes, but also where he is not speaking.
5. In many of his movies, he twirls small objects (coins, pencils, etc.) with his fingers.

Val Kilmer Quotes

• [on Christopher Nolan’s Batman films] Well, they did what I hoped that we would have done with it. It’s like with Spielberg and Lucas, they don’t wonder what kids think, they go ask them! And that was my suggestion – why don’t we talk to the people that really love it? Because I had childhood ideas and memories of Batman, and when you think of what Bob Kane dreamt up, he really understood something fundamental that’s still entertaining us. I think because of Tim Burton’s success with the first one, with Nicholson being so amazing, you can’t help but want to see it over again. I think they got carried away with the idea of the bad guy being immune to the rules. Like in the first one, he really gets the hell kicked out of him and then thrown off the bell tower. I mean, he suffers. And that went away and it became sort of cute or something. It’s entertaining, but I think the new films are more the original spirit.
• (2011) I think I shortchanged myself in terms of my acting career, because it’s a very hard job to do well and there are many, many, many talented artists. And I didn’t take advantage of those opportunities like most of my peers, where there’s a real consistency. Once you achieve a certain level of fame, you can secure it with money and you can secure it with relationships, and I just lived in New Mexico for 25 years.
• (2011) I don’t believe in death. I think it’s just a state of mind. The physicists now are starting to catch up with artists or the witch doctor, the healer, because now they can prove mathematically that everything’s just a point of view.
• (On his youthful drug experimentation) If marijuana was supposed to make you mellow, I would be like, “The cops, the cops, the cops . . .” I was what you call the buzz kill.
• I would do a bad western with a good horse any day of the week.
• [Prior to his divorce from Joanne Whalley]: “It’s great. Instead of going out to parties, I go home to my family.”
• I thought I was going to marry my last girlfriend, she was just so wonderful. Daryl Hannah, fantastic woman. We shared so many interests, and we really made each other laugh . . . she just fascinated me. But there’s something fundamentally where we didn’t . . . maybe almost like brother and sister, just so alike, that it couldn’t . . . ” – Brentwood Magazine, October 2003.
• It hurts. I miss my kids. I miss my kids in so many ways that I can’t explain.
• There are some directors I should have worked with. I’d like to have worked with Altman [Robert Altman] – I turned him down a couple of times when I was younger. My thing now is if it’s a good director I’ll never say no – I’m just gonna say yes from now on. (2004)
• Big movies are fun and it’s great to fly on private jets and make a lot of money and all the things that are connected with Hollywood, but they take a lot of your own life.
• I probably complained more when I was younger. The movie industry can be frustrating but I think sometimes I could have been more helpful, approaching a film as a partnership rather than being critical of a director’s ignorance. I wasn’t sensitive to the fact that it’s very hard to direct.
• The trick to being a good actor is getting so involved in your character that the camera disappears, the 50 bored guys eating doughnuts disappear, friends disappear. To get to that point when you don’t have to think about it, you’re just acting and reacting in those circumstances.
• New Mexico is my home. It has never been anything but home. The ranch has rivers and canyon, everything imaginable. I can ride, hunt and fish. At the same time, ranching is grueling, difficult work. It’s like acting, to be successful at it, you have to work hard. I take it very seriously.
• My only challenge is to entertain. And I accomplish my task better when I myself am entertained by what I am doing. I am very critical of myself, I constantly set the bar higher and higher. I try to surpass myself. That’s all. But I also know how to preserve myself, to not let myself get bedazzled by the smoke and mirrors.
• I listened to a lot of records. I smoked quite a few cigarettes and that – the smoking – stayed with me unfortunately! And I copied his voice in much the same way as I would learn an accent. With a lot of work, I got it. I found Jim’s voice. Whenever people see me singing, it’s really me singing. It’s live. Oliver [Oliver Stone] was counting a lot on the spontaneity and the authenticity, especially in the concert scenes. Everything was prerecorded just in case but I ended up performing it all live. It is all a thing of imagination and one can have the tendency to underestimate it. Physically, I enjoyed myself a lot when I had to gain weight to incarnate Jim Morrison at the end of his life. When he is in a stupor, intoxicated by alcohol and drugs, he resembles Karl Marx. The make-up artists took Polaroids and showed them to the Doors guitarist and to Alain Ronay to get their approval. They were amazed by the resemblance and that helped me a lot. – On becoming Jim Morrison for The Doors (1991).
• “I guess I’m one of the new generation of actors who have as little to do with the machinery of Hollywood as possible. We’re colonizing whole chunks of cowboy territory; I never liked LA when I was growing up there as a kid, and I don’t like it now. I’ve got my visits to that city down to a science: I make some people get up early, other stay up late — and I can be in and out in a day.” – 1992 quote.
• “For my audition, I did a monologue from one of my plays. I couldn’t find anything contemporary that they wouldn’t have seen hundreds of times before. I didn’t know what I was doing, but it worked.” – On his Juilliard audition.
• “When they decide they want to expand their repertoire of facial expressions, say, play a character part, or do a period piece, it’s often their fate, tragically, that they fail. Few actors have learned about acting by doing successful movies. Tom Cruise has, and Tom Hanks.” – On mainstream box-office actors.
• It’s probably fair to say I have taken myself too seriously on some jobs. I’m sure I’m more guilty of being difficult than I’d like to remember. I don’t regret my desires; I’ve regretted the way I would communicate my desires. Maybe I’ve lost a job because of some rumor, I doubt it. But nobody good that I’ve worked with has ever said anything negative about me, because we’ve never had a negative experience. By good, I mean directors who do their homework, people that are passionate, crazy, never sleep, and do like I do and just go after it.
• “It made me consider time differently, because my year ends when the year ends. I blame my birth date for being hung up about time.”- On his New Year’s Eve birthday.
• “I liked being Doc Holliday. It’s fun to be insightful and aristocratic, to stand up for your friend and make sacrifices for him. It was fun to be arrogant like he was and have the goods to back it up. He was a very noble character. Although, let’s not forget, he did kill a lot of people.” – On Tombstone (1993).
• Doing my first movie, I realized I could get into real bad habits. If you’re the star, all you have to do is show up, and 20 people say, ‘Do you want anything? What is it? Let me get it for you.’ Believe me, you get spoiled very quickly. I saw some of my contemporaries allow themselves to have that fame, thinking they could handle it. It messed them up.
• “When I figured out that to have money you had to work, I knew I couldn’t hack a regular job. So I thought acting would be good, because basically you made your own hours, were ridiculously overpaid and got the girls. Don’t laugh! That was the truth!” – On how he first came about considered acting as a career.
• I think spiritual perception comes from natural and healthy relationship to the land and I’ve had that. I get an easy, automatic sense of myself in nature, a wholeness and I feel nowhere else. I think people should live where praying is most immediate. That’s why I live in New Mexico. The physical terrain, the feeling, the environment and culture improve my life just by waking up there.
• “It looked like it might not work out with Michael Keaton, so they asked Joel Schumacher, ‘Who do you want for Batman?’ When he said me, I asked my agent, ‘Why? Who did they not get?’ I’d met with Joel a couple of times before about other [movies]. I didn’t know anything in terms of the cast, story or anything, but I said, ‘Sure, sounds like fun.'” – On accepting his role as Batman.
• “Parts. Little people are very funny. They already know that life is weird. So that part was fun. My co-star, I ended up marrying – that was fun. We went to New Zealand and we went to Wales. All the traveling was fun but wearing the pink dress wasn’t fun.” – On if filming Willow (1988) was fun.
• Poetry is a very subjective and intimate expression. It’s literally your heartbeat. Your rhythm. The song of your soul. It’s superconcentrated. It’s a dense piece of yourself.
• I’d be in a bad western on a good horse any day of the week. It’s such a fantastic genre of film.
• “Every day was such a trial. It was a unique kind of hell. All the audience knows is the end result – and that’s as it should be, but the experience of making it is quite different.” – On filming Tombstone (1993).
• “Nothing’s ever guaranteed. It’s all math, like, ‘This guy has better numbers, so give the job to him.’ If the business people think they can make money with you, it’s not, like, a deep conversation that they have about you. Actors can get into a rhythm of working where the confidence [about them] is like the stock market. Someone ‘feels’ good, so they pay whatever, which gives other studios confidence, like ‘Those guys have good taste, they hired him,’ so whether he or she is any good, you can do four or five jobs like that until you’re discovered. This town is filled with mystery careers — people who aren’t discovered found out, and they keep giving money to them.” – On having a successful acting career.
• It may or may not sound pretentious. But I’ve turned down, consciously and specifically, many jobs I knew would have been a pretty surefire way to go about making a lot of money, being recognized and gaining power in the industry.
• I was given a copy of that script because at one point I was involved with Dune (1984). It would have been my first job for damn near a year. So, Dave (Lynch) gave me the script and it was straight-out, hard-core pornography before page 30. I never finished it. I said, ‘Good luck, but I can’t do this.’ It isn’t what he ended up making. THAT movie, I WOULD have done. – On why he turned down David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986).
• I feel safer in Johannesburg than in L.A. Violence comes out of the blue here. I’ve had friends who have been carjacked, all kinds of things. Successful felons, criminals love L.A. It’s so big, there’s so many freeways to get on after you do your score. Because of its possibilities, L.A.’s the most sorrowful city in the world.
• “It’s the most fulfilling thing I can do and get paid for.” – On theatre.
• There are only three reasons to do a movie: the cast, the director, the role. Like I say, you live in a minute of screen time, but to prepare for the minute takes much more than a day. You’d better be excited about what those moments are, even if they’re the hardest moments. Or the smallest.
• Acting is not a science. Anybody who believes that their success exists in relation to their goals is deluding themselves; unless you think of a career in terms of financial goals. I have nothing against Tom Cruise, but he must have a large capacity to deal with the business side of movies.
• Being called Jim made it easier for Oliver [Oliver Stone] and probably for me. In the end that approach was healthy because I don’t believe you’ve got to go out and shoot dope to play Jim Morrison. – On if the rumors were true about Kilmer insisting being called Jim Morrison while filming The Doors (1991).
• I’ve done a lot of jobs that were just for money or were just the best things around at the time.
• Interesting characters are troubled characters. The only problem I’ve had in my business is very few people – unfortunately, very vocal – confusing the difficult role that I play with me. I play these guys, but I’m not like them. I’ve been accused of being difficult to work with. But that’s like saying the football player’s out of breath ’cause when he comes off the field having caught a hundred-yard pass he shouldn’t be out of breath. He’s not out of shape; he just went and did his job.
• “I’m very lucky in that I haven’t cultivated fame. Which, from what I’ve seen of my contemporaries, takes an enormous amount of time. I have a lot of respect for people that do it and they’re successful at it … Especially people that aren’t such talented actors.” – Quote from 2001.
• I think John Holmes is one of the first twenty or fifty people that fulfilled Andy Warhol’s prophecy that one day everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes. People who had nothing to do with pornography, or had any interest in it, knew who John Holmes was. And somehow it was famous, at least in LA, that Canoga Park was the pornography center of the planet. I still don’t know why, but I knew that as a kid.
• He was basically a nerd, and he really had wonderful qualities. I’ve never really played a hustler before, but he was absolutely a world-class hustler. A liar lies and a thief steals from you, but a hustler gives you something that you don’t mind parting with your money for. You’re entertained by the meal or the sex or the impression that something is going to happen. You’re given a sense of well-being, and he was good at it. – On his character John Holmes for the movie Wonderland (2003).
• It’s always been the same for me. I’ve always enjoyed acting, and I really love good actors; they’re such unique characters. I wish I could tell stories well, or tell a joke. Any time someone can do that it’s so satisfying. Sean Penn, for instance, is a really good actor, and he can tell a good joke or story. But it’s hard to do. Most actors have special talents that make them attractive, but they’re often odd characters.
• Being successful doesn’t change things. There’s a painful, lonely part of acting because you’re always waiting. The thing about being a performer is doing, and when you have to wait, it’s the same pain as when you’re starting out and have no job. You think that thing will go away, but it doesn’t. It just shifts. I remember Robert Duvall saying that being a successful actor is all about finding interesting hobbies, because if you don’t have the right hobby, you die. It’s very hard to maintain interest. Most actors don’t. They become a little clichéd. You learn how to do tricks and stuff.
• “I was going to movies and watching TV, going to the theater a little bit. It was, like, ‘Wow, you could make a living doing this? Great! What could be better?’ There isn’t anything I could choose better.” – On why he initially choose acting as a career while still a young man.
• The only time it’s ever like work is when you don’t like what you’ve done.
• Upon playing Batman: “I’ve done an absurdly commercial cartoon and now I’m more likely to get hired for a job I couldn’t get hired for before, because I hadn’t done enough movies. It’s so rare when an actor gets hired because he’s right for the role – it just doesn’t figure into it.”

Val Kilmer Important Facts

• $1,000,000
• $10,000,000
• $9,000,000
• $6,000,000
• $6,000,000
• $7,000,000
• Is referenced frequently in Psych. He made a surprise cameo in the series finale as the oft-referenced but never seen Detective Dobson.
• Val Kilmer auditioned for the lead role in Full Metal Jacket (1987) that eventually went to Matthew Modine.
• The only actor to have played both Doc Holliday (Tombstone (1993)) and Wyatt Earp (Wyatt Earp’s Revenge (2012)).
• As of 2015, is the only actor to play Batman in a live action movie (not based on a TV series) to not be nominated/win an Academy Award for acting.
• He has two roles in common with Christian Bale: (1) Kilmer played Batman / Bruce Wayne in Batman Forever (1995) while Bale played Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012) and (2) Kilmer played Moses in The Prince of Egypt (1998) while Bale played him in Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014).
• He has two roles in common with Adam West: (1) West played Doc Holliday in Sugarfoot (1957), Colt .45 (1957) and Lawman (1958) while Kilmer played him in Tombstone (1993) and (2) West played Batman / Bruce Wayne in Batman (1966), Batman: The Movie (1966), SuperFriends: The Legendary Super Powers Show (1984), The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians (1985), The New Adventures of Batman (1977) and Legends of the Superheroes (1979) while Kilmer played him in Batman Forever (1995).
• Made a personal appearance for the 2007 Orchard Beach Classic Car, Truck, and Motorcycle Show in New York. This was a one day non-profit fund raising event to raise money for the families of police officers who were killed in the September 11th terrorist attack. [September 2007]
• While promoting Comanche Moon (2008) and awaiting production of his latest film to start; joined Rosario Dawson, Jessica Alba, Katie Holmes, Gina Gershon and Kerry Washington in supporting V-Day and the global effort to end violence against women and girls. Ticket-sale proceeds from this event went to fund several non-profit non-violent humanitarian missions around the world. [January 2008]
• While on break from the set of Streets of Blood (2009) with 50 Cent, he joined Cuba Gooding Jr. in supporting the First Star Celebration for Children’s Rights. [June 2008]
• Filming alongside Will Forte and Ryan Phillippe for Universal Picture’s MacGruber (2010). [August 2009]
• While on break from the set of his latest film, he joined former ambassador Joseph Wilson, Jonathan Richards, former CIA undercover agent Valerie Plame Wilson, Mary-Charlotte Domandi, Jane Fonda and Ali MacGraw in reading pieces from the new Eve Ensler book about ending violence against women and girls worldwide. Ticket-sale proceeds from this exclusive event went to various non-profit projects around the world. [June 2007]
• Filming alongside Denzel Washington, Paula Patton and Jim Caviezel in Tony Scott’s Deja Vu (2006), on location in New Orleans. [June 2006]
• Playing in a production of David Mamet’s “The Postman Always Rings Twice” in London. [July 2005]
• Made a personal appearance at the Big Apple Comic Book & Sci-Fi Expo in New York City. This was a two day fund raising event for several non-profit organizations as Kilmer donated all proceeds. [November 2007]
• One of his favourite directors was Tony Scott. The two worked together on three films, Top Gun (1986), True Romance (1993) and Deja Vu (2006).
• During the filming of Streets of Blood (2009), 50 Cent became good friends with Val Kilmer. The two actors bonded over their love of vintage cars and 50 Cent stunned Kilmer by giving him the keys of a 1965 Chevy Impala which the singer-turned-actor purchased for $100,000.
• Is a longtime board member of the New Mexico State Film Commission, which tries to persuade Los Angeles – based filmmakers and studios to film on location in New Mexico.
• Told Interview magazine during a 1991 conversation to promote The Doors (1991) that as a child, his family had employed a veteran of the Vietnam War, ongoing at the time, as a full-time babysitter. When the man found work elsewhere, the Kilmer family lost touch with him. Through Interview magazine they made an appeal for the Vietnam vet to reconnect with them.
• Father, with Joanne Whalley, of daughter Mercedes Kilmer (born on October 29, 1991) and son Jack Kilmer (born on June 6, 1995).
• Attended high school with Mare Winningham and stated in his biography that “he was in love with her, cause she was old enough to drive and he wasn’t”.
• Younger brother of Mark and older brother of Wesley.
• While promoting The Prince of Egypt (1998), he visited 6 countries in 5 days, stopping in Amsterdam, Rome, Madrid, Berlin, Paris and Zurich.
• Volunteered to work with AmeriCares in 1998.
• Actor Girard Swan has worked as his double on past films.
• To date (2007), he has appeared in one Tony Scott film per decade, for three decades. First was Top Gun (1986) in 1986, then True Romance (1993) in 1993, and then Deja Vu (2006) in 2006.
• Was succeeded as Batman by George Clooney.
• Was considered for the role of Captain America/Steve Rogers in the failed 1990 film adaptation of the character. Captain America later fought Batman, whom Kilmer played, in the 1996 DC vs. Marvel storyline.
• He and his old friend Kevin Spacey have both played iconic characters from DC Comics. Kilmer played Batman in Batman Forever (1995), and Spacey played Lex Luthor in Superman Returns (2006).
• His paternal grandfather was a gold miner in New Mexico.
• Second cousin of journalist and poet Joyce Kilmer.
• Val’s father was of English, as well as Welsh, Northern Irish (Scots-Irish), French Huguenot, and German, ancestry. Val’s mother was of Swedish ancestry.
• Born to Eugene Kilmer and his wife, Gladys Ekstadt.
• Kilmer was eventually succeeded in the role of “Batman” by Christian Bale after George Clooney vacated the role. In The Prince of Egypt (1998), Kilmer provides the voice of “God”, while Bale played “Jesus” in Mary, Mother of Jesus (1999).
• His work with the New Mexico Film Investment Program fueled a nearly 40-fold growth in the state’s annual production revenue, from $3 million in 2002 to $117 million in 2006.
• Grew up in the San Fernando Valley the middle son of three boys (Mark the eldest; Wesley the youngest). During his high school years, Wesley drowned in the family’s swimming pool, an incident Val claims inspired his subsequent performance in The Salton Sea (2002).
• Was originally cast as Johnny Mnemonic in Johnny Mnemonic (1995) but left the project when he was offered the role of Batman in Batman Forever (1995). He was replaced by Keanu Reeves, whom Kilmer later replaced as Chris Shiherlis in Heat (1995).
• Shares two roles with Peter Dobson. In True Romance (1993), Kilmer plays Elvis Presley, a role Dobson played in Forrest Gump (1994). Kilmer also plays Chris Shiherlis in Heat (1995), which was a remake of L.A. Takedown (1989), in which Dobson played the role.
• He and Elvis Presley, whom Kilmer portrayed in True Romance (1993), were/are both said to have Cherokee ancestry.
• While the movie The Missing (2003) was being shot about one hour from his New Mexico ranch, he called up his old friend Ron Howard [writer/director] and asked for a part. Ron gladly accepted and gave him a part which only took 3 days to film. Kilmer’s scene is close to 13 minutes long, not counting the DVD’s deleted scene.
• Warwick Davis, Kilmer’s co-star in Willow (1988), says in his audio commentary that the question he is most frequently asked is: “What was is it like to work with Val Kilmer?” Davis says he has very fond memories of working with Kilmer, stating that Kilmer had a great sense of humor and was very dedicated to the job.
• Keith Campbell has doubled for him in many films. His most recent double has been Chuck Borden.
• Was originally set to play the lead role in The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996) but asked to switch roles because of his divorce.
• Broke his arm while filming The Doors (1991) when he performed a jump from the stage into the crowd and the stuntman failed to catch him. The injury has left Kilmer with an abnormal growth on his left elbow that can clearly be seen many times in Heat (1995).
• Wrote poetry for actress Michelle Pfeiffer.
• He was in the Kalahari Desert in Africa researching a story he was writing about witch doctors when he was offered the Batman Forever (1995) Batman role.
• Visited Iraq briefly in April 1998 with AmeriCares, delivering supplies such as food, medicine and baby food.
• Turned down roles in movies such as: Dune (1984), Blue Velvet (1986), Flatliners (1990), Captain America (1990), Backdraft (1991), Sliver (1993), Point Break (1991), In the Line of Fire (1993), Indecent Proposal (1993), Crimson Tide (1995), Batman & Robin (1997), The Insider (1999), Bandits (2001), a cameo in Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002), Collateral (2004) and Dark Matter (2007).
• Turned down Patrick Swayze’s role in Dirty Dancing (1987) because he didn’t want to be perceived as a “hunk.”
• Stated in 1999 that At First Sight (1999) was his most challenging role to date.
• Loves buffalo (and owns several on his ranch in New Mexico).
• In the past he used to send taped auditions to filmmakers, figuring they would be much better (and less pressure) than live auditions.
• In 1995, Kilmer learned he was getting a divorce while watching CNN in a hotel room. “It was no fun,” he has said.
• His parents divorced when he was 9 years old.
• His first auditions were for commercials at 13 years old.
• His father, Eugene, died in 1993.
• Has lived in New Mexico since 1983.
• Good friends with actor Frank Whaley and musician David Crosby.
• Filmed his part as Elvis Presley in True Romance (1993) in 1 day.
• Enjoys scuba diving and traveling.
• After his first film, Top Secret! (1984), he went off and backpacked around Europe.
• Admits in interviews that he is a horrible cook.
• He was 4′ 11″ when he entered high school. He acknowledged this on Late Night with Conan O’Brien (1993).
• Has played two legendary rock and roll musicians: Jim Morrison and Elvis Presley.
• Does a variation on his trademark of twirling objects in Willow (1988): he twirls a sword during the fight in the snow camp.
• Appeared in Tombstone (1993) opposite Charlton Heston. Five years later, he succeeded Heston in the roles of both Moses and God in The Prince of Egypt (1998).
• Did not want to appear in Top Gun (1986) but was forced to do so because of contractual obligations.
• Oliver Stone once considered him for the role of Alexander the Great in his long-delayed Alexander (2004) project. Kilmer plays the father of Alexander, King Philip, opposite Colin Farrell in the Alexander role instead.
• Is the only blonde actor to have played Bruce Wayne/Batman.
• During the sled riding scene in Willow (1988), he can be seen wearing a black glove on his left hand.
• Contrary to popular belief, he enjoyed playing “Batman” despite his poor working relationship with Joel Schumacher during the production of Batman Forever (1995).
• Got the role of Chris Shiherlis in Heat (1995) after Keanu Reeves, who was originally cast as Chris, backed out.
• Turned down a role in The Outsiders (1983) because he was working with a theater company at the time, and if he had pulled out, the show would have been cancelled and his fellow actors out of a job.
• Did his own singing while playing Jim Morrison in The Doors (1991). The real members of the band said they had difficulty distinguishing Kilmer’s voice from that of Morrison’s.
• Is the second actor to play Batman in the movie franchise. He succeeded Michael Keaton (Batman (1989), Batman Returns (1992)) and preceded #3 George Clooney (Batman & Robin (1997)); #4 Christian Bale (Batman Begins (2005); The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012)) and #5 Ben Affleck (Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)). If counting the two different film serials and the television series, then Kilmer is the fifth actor to play Batman. The first 15-chapter film serial, Batman (1943), was released in 1941 and starred Lewis Wilson. The second 15-chapter film serial, Batman and Robin (1949), was released in 1949 and starred Robert Lowery. The TV series, Batman (1966), starred Adam West.
• Met first wife, British actress Joanne Whalley, when they filmed the 1988 fantasy, Willow (1988). They had two children: daughter Mercedes Kilmer (born in 1991) and son Jack Kilmer (born in 1995).
• While being let out of the metal cage during the filming of the crossroads scene in Willow (1988), the rope holding the cage up broke and the cage landed on Kilmer’s foot, nearly breaking it. Later on in the film, Kilmer (who played swordsman Madmartigan) can be spotted having difficulty walking.
• Val Kilmer and Marlon Brando infuriated director John Frankenheimer on the set of The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996). Frankenheimer later vowed to never work with Kilmer again.
• Was at the time the youngest student ever accepted into Juilliard’s drama department. His record has been supplanted by Juilliard student Seth Numrich, who was admitted at 15 in 2002.
• Co-authored play “How It All Began,” performed at the New York Shakespeare Festival, Public Theatre, in 1981.
• Ranked #62 in Empire (UK) magazine’s “The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time” list. [October 1997]
• Attended Chatsworth High School with Kevin Spacey and Mare Winningham.

Val Kilmer Filmography

Val Kilmer Awards