A biography for Val Kilmerhasn’t been written yet.
“What I do for a living is listen.”
“My father was raised in the mountains of New Mexico, and he picked cotton for a dollar a day. He was working for the family from the time he was 7.”
“We take what's shown on television as the truth, and it isn't. News isn't even the truth on television. If you look up the definition of what news is, it isn't that what we're watching on the new - it's entertainment.”
“Mark Twain had a way of telling stories that shifts your consciousness away from labels.”
“Most films made about the future acquiesce toward death, and I don't want to be told how to define my future.”
“Warren Beatty once told me that if someone's really stuck on you, find them their next boyfriend. But I could never do that.”
“Daryl Hannah likes to goof around with fashion, but she does have pretty impeccable taste.”
“Again, in Wag the Dog, war has to be declared by an act of congress. But if you go to war, you don't have to declare war. You're just at war and we did that, which is not legal.”
“Life is precious, and when someone dies it's an opportunity to realise how precious it is. My brother drowned when I was 17. He was 15. I think I grew from that. My father didn't. It really crushed him.”
“I don't think of my life as a cliche, but I'm a cliche eccentric. Complete with a strange name - I mean, who's named Val? How many Vals do you know? I mean, really?”
“There are lots of actors who are awful people, but nobody talks about them being awful because they've made billions.”
“It's the persona that makes you a leading actor. A leading actor has something extra that's fun to watch. But it isn't usually about acting.”
“I've never been that comfortable talking about myself or about acting.”
“I love that Bob Dylan asked me to be in the first movie he wrote.”
“Hollywood's like a warehouse. It's just a place that you go. What's interesting in the warehouse has to do with the creative people.”
“There was no one around called 'Val' when I was young, so I wanted to be John or Bill. Now I like it.”
“There was such a relationship between the buffalo and the American Indian - the Indians would eat them, live inside their pelts, use every part of the body. There was almost no separation between the people and the animals.”
“The first play I saw was a Samuel Beckett play which was great.”
“I live on a ranch that's larger than Manhattan. That's a weird circumstance.”
“I would probably do anything with David Mamet. He's so great. I just love his writing.”