If there’s one thing we know for sure about the dazzling lights of Hollywood, it’s that they’re fickle, impartial, and oh so ruthless when it comes to building someone up just to drop them down.
I mean, how many ‘stars’ have we seen come and go? How many times have we watched someone groomed for the big time only for their name to drop out of all sight and memory after a couple of years?
That’s why, for me at least, when a person is able to leave their stamp over the course of several generations, it’s a truly impressive feat. Val Kilmer is one such star … bursting onto the scene after appearing in a series of blockbuster hits, and then doing enough to ensure he was ingrained in popular culture.
After all, his heyday might have been the ’80s and ’90s, but his legacy has secured his position as an all-time favorite.
Even so, there’s still a good deal about the now-62-year-old that you might not know. I mean, I consider myself something of a diehard fan, and there was a good deal I didn’t know about Val, including his turbulent love life and his somewhat dramatic physical transformation …
Val Edward Kilmer was born on December 31, 1959 in Los Angeles. Though it might be difficult to imagine him in any profession other than acting, it wasn’t as though his family had a history stepped in performance.
No, in fact his father, Eugene Kilmer, was an aerospace equipment distributor and real estate developer.
Which is why it might well have surprised his parents that Val was such a naturally talented showman. After attending Chatsworth High School (with Kevin Spacey and Mare Winningham), and the Hollywood Professional School (where the afternoons were kept free for students to focus on auditions), he became the youngest ever person at the time to be accepted into the Juilliard School’s Drama Division in New York. No small feat given the obvious prestige.
By this point, it was starting to become clear that Val had serious talent. That, along with his charisma, was sure to take him far. Just how far, of course, very few people would have guessed.
Even so, Val found his time at the Juilliard School difficult. He didn’t fit in well with the establishment’s authoritarian way of running things, which led to complications when he wanted to go his own way in certain manners.
Nevertheless, he undoubtedly honed his craft there, and, despite the trials and tribulations, he graduated with a good deal of skill and experience that would stand him in good stead in the years to come.
Following Juilliard, the young Val dove straight into the New York City theater scene, taking on roles and making a name for himself on the circuit after a string of well-received performances on stage.
Around this time he was also forging another sort of reputation: that of a ladies man. He would go on to enjoy relationships with the likes of Cher and Ellen Barkin, but it was during his time on the theater scene when the wheels started to turn in this respect.
Before long, Val had started to make serious moves into the world of show business. He made his big-screen debut in the 1984 spy spoof movie Top Secret!, following it up with a supporting role in Real Genius (1985).
Yet it was his next big film, appearing opposite Tom Cruise as Iceman in Top Gun, that really propelled him to fame.
Top Gun proved a massive financial success worldwide, and shed light on Val Kilmer as he was just emerging in the world of blockbuster films. Overnight, he became a fixture on the Hollywood map, and that, naturally led to new speculation over the man behind the winning smile.
Kilmer followed Top Gun up with roles in several big films over the course of the ’80s, and appeared in the ABC afterschool Special One Too Many with Michelle Pfeiffer. That in itself sparked rumours of a budding romance between the two, though neither of them confirmed them.
Instead, two years later, Val released a poem about her named “The Pfeiffer Howls at the Moon”. An ode to a lasting friendship or a reflection on a relationship kept away from the cameras? We’ll never know.
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