How Val Kilmer really felt about his ‘difficult’ reputation: “I guess, in a way, I’m lucky”
When Val Kilmer passed away in April 2025, the film world came together to commemorate a major talent, with many feeling that the handsome star hadn’t been given the respect he deserved during his 65 years on this Earth for being capable of delivering deep, dramatic performances as he was slipping into a major franchise.
However, while he might have been a top-tier performer, he didn’t always help himself in his personal life.
Kilmer wasn’t always the easiest person to deal with when the cameras weren’t rolling, as Joel Schumacher, who directed the departed icon in Batman Forever, once called him a “disturbed human being” for how he acted on set. He managed to piss off both directors who worked on The Island of Dr Moreau, despite Richard Stanley only being there for about three days. The words ‘difficult to work with’ come up time and time again in reports of Kilmer’s backstage behaviour, and that’s if people are being polite.
You might think this would have caused the star of The Doors some distress; nobody wants to be unliked, especially when working in an industry where collaboration and reputation are key to success, but not Kilmer, who, in an interview with The Oklahoman, didn’t seem phased by this opinion of him one bit.
“I guess in a way I’m lucky,” he said, “You don’t get that kind of attention unless you’re working a lot; so that’s my good luck… On the other hand, some of the things I’ve heard are tragic. They’re just other people’s opinions. I don’t think there’s many actors or actresses I’ve worked with that would tell you I’m difficult on a set or anywhere else.”
It’s important to remember that not everyone he worked with held this opinion of him, where Kurt Russell, who played opposite him in Tombstone, spoke very highly of their time together. When Tom Cruise was making Top Gun: Maverick, he insisted that Kilmer be a part of it, which turned out to be his final film role.
In a 1997 interview with the AV Club, At First Sight star Mira Sorvino actually called people out for saying disparaging things about her former colleague, noting during the pinnacle of Kilmer’s most notorious period, “I just hate furthering rumours about people being difficult. It can do such enormous damage to their careers”.
Sadly, his life would take a tragic turn over the next decade and a half, and in 2014, he had to stop his one-man show about Mark Twain because he lost his voice, which turned out to be an early sign of throat cancer. His public image became defined by the illness that would eventually take his life, as its very public development transformed him from a figure of disdain to one of sympathy.
Now that the book of Kilmer has been closed, it’s still hard to fully gauge the man. His fellow actors berated and praised him in equal measure, only for opinions about him to switch around following his illness and death, and while we’ll never fully understand him, it just makes him an even more fascinating figure to analyse.
