The performance Nicolas Cage is adamant was robbed of an Oscar: “He should have won”
When Val Kilmer passed earlier this year at 65, there were tributes paid to him from across the movie industry, from co-stars including Nicolas Cage and Tom Cruise to directors like Michael Mann and Francis Ford Coppola. Despite earning himself a reputation as a difficult man to work with, on occasion, during his career, those tributes spoke of Kilmer’s acting range and called him “uber-creative”.
The idea that Los Angeles-born Kilmer was tough to work with was further rebuked by The Office creator Stephen Merchant, who, together with Ricky Gervais, brought Kilmer in for a cameo appearance on Life is Short, the fictional comedy show that followed actor Warwick Davis (who appeared in Willow with Kilmer) during his day-to-day life.
Merchant shared a clip of the show and wrote: “Despite a combative reputation, Val Kilmer was great fun to work with on Life’s Too Short, always willing to be playful and self-deprecating. I got to know him socially too, and he was as engaging as he was eccentric.”
The flip side to the praise is the stories that circulated while Kilmer was still alive, many of which stemmed from the shoot for Batman Forever, in which he played the ‘Caped Crusader’ himself. He did not get on with the film’s director, Joel Schumacher, at all, with the man at the helm describing Kilmer as “Childish and difficult to work with”.
There were also reports of the actor, who had earned the nickname ‘Psycho Kilmer’, putting out a cigarette on a crew member, for which he apologised. Another ill-fated shoot was for the 1996 film The Island of Dr Moreau, where again a director, this time John Frankenheimer, said, “I will never climb Mount Everest, and I will never work with Val Kilmer again”.
But with each spate of difficult behaviour, it seems there were mitigating circumstances for Kilmer. In the case of working on Dr Moreau, for instance, Kilmer had just found out his wife, Joanne Whalley, was about to divorce him.
German director Werner Herzog, who took the reins for Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans starring Kilmer and Nicolas Cage, was no stranger to the art of falling out with a leading actor. In the case of his relationship with fellow countryman, actor Klaus Kinski, things got so bad that a documentary named My Dearest Foe was made about how tumultuous the two were on the set of films like 1982’s Fitzcarraldo.
But Herzog had nothing bad to say about Kilmer, perhaps aided by the fact that the actor had asked for a small role in the 2009 Bad Lieutenant movie, simply to spend some time with the director.
Nicolas Cage, meanwhile, believed his co-star to be a huge talent who missed out on some of the plaudits he perhaps should have received while he was alive. Cage told Deadline, “I always liked Val and am sad to hear of his passing. I thought he was a genius actor. I enjoyed working with him on Bad Lieutenant, and I admired his commitment and sense of humour. He should have won the Oscar for The Doors.”
That film, an Oliver Stone-directed biopic of rock legend Jim Morrison, is, along with Kilmer’s ‘Ice Man’ character in 1986’s Top Gun, probably the actor’s most famous role. Some of the reports of Kilmer’s persona on set went from amusing to troublesome, however. From reportedly insisting on always being addressed as ‘Jim’ by the crew to an actress alleging he slapped her to the ground as part of an audition—a settlement on that was reached—it all paints a picture of an ego out of control.
Kilmer, for his part, attempted to explain the accusations of his being difficult, saying, “I didn’t do enough hand-holding, and flattering, and reassuring to the financier. I only cared about the acting, and that didn’t translate to caring about the film or all that money. I like to take risks, and this often gave the impression I was willing to risk their money not being returned, which was foolish of me.”
