I've been very fortunate and met the guys that have become, basically, philosophers and have a kind of sensibility about life that's very precious.
— Val Kilmer
A wonderful but kind of a terrible truth about acting is that you actually get to a point where you become content with an impossible task: it is really impossible to properly prepare. You kind of have to start over every time.
I never cultivated a personality. Almost everyone who is really famous has cultivated a personality.
I am not an American; I am the American.
Peter Sellers was just a brilliant actor, and also comedic.
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.
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 think part of my reputation has to do with the difficult roles I've played. Actors do tend to get identified with their characters.
I never had a business plan. I did, actually - I'm lying. My business plan was to get lucky, and I did; that was great. And then my second business plan was to get lucky again, and there, I faltered.
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.
It is a weird thing that actors have people applaud when they're done working. I still find that entertaining.
I don't watch television, but I saw 'The Office' by accident. I thought it was so sophisticated, the Victorian love story, and so bold. We'd do anything, all of us, to not work in that environment, and then I'm sitting there watching hours of it.
With legitimate journalists I've always had a great time - I've never gone out of my way to court the press. That's probably cost me some money, but I've always had the respect of my peers.
Daryl Hannah likes to goof around with fashion, but she does have pretty impeccable taste.
Being creative and making money in the theater is very challenging.
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 are a thousand ways to play any role.
News isn't even the truth on television.
It's fun to look at people that are so good at acting that aren't actors, like David Bowie creating a mystique about rock n' roll.
I live on a ranch that's larger than Manhattan. That's a weird circumstance.
Most films made about the future acquiesce toward death, and I don't want to be told how to define my future.
What I do for a living is listen.
There's nothing good about divorce.
I'm a character actor, but I look like a leading man.
If you're in a hit movie, it's good to be in another hit movie straight away.
I can safely say that no one who has ever won an Oscar didn't want to win an Oscar.
I just don't think I've ever been comfortable at public functions and selling myself as an entity.
Youth is seen as everything. You don't know anything when you're young. It's great being older, just having a more balanced perspective. I wake up and realise that what seemed to be important last year no longer is. I'm increasingly grateful for every day.
There was no one around called 'Val' when I was young, so I wanted to be John or Bill. Now I like it.
The good reviews that people have told me about through the years haven't really helped me do my job. So it's kind of like, if your hair turns out right you want to go out, you don't just want to stay in and look in the mirror. That's kind of what reading a review is like to me; it's like reveling in something that's just one night.
You just don't understand humility until you have children and get divorced.
I think death is just a transition to another state of consciousness.
I'm going to put a museum on my ranch and people keep saying, 'That's a huge idea.' Yeah, it's big, but not bigger than the average big movie. A hundred million dollars in the art world is a substantial amount of cash to do anything. That's maybe a big gallery's total sales for a given year.
Mark Twain had a way of telling stories that shifts your consciousness away from labels.
I would probably do anything with David Mamet. He's so great. I just love his writing.
Warren Beatty once told me that if someone's really stuck on you, find them their next boyfriend. But I could never do that.
I've never been that comfortable talking about myself or about acting.
One out of 100 citizens of the U.S. is going to prison, and it's not that the system is making criminals, it's that it's making criminals better criminals. We're breeding them like rats and it has to change.
There are lots of actors who are awful people, but nobody talks about them being awful because they've made billions.
It's a really weird thing, modern divorce. I found out I was getting divorced on television. That was kind of weird.
My children have absolutely no interest in my fame. They're very sophisticated, and they have a spiritual perspective on material things because we go to church.
Hollywood is wonderful, but it does eat its young.
When you're young, you're always concerned about how you're being seen and how you're being criticized.
It's fun to look at people that are so good at acting that aren't actors, like David Bowie creating a mystique about rock n' roll. I've listened to 'Ziggy Stardust' as much as any rock n' roll fan - I don't really know what it's about, but it sure is fun to think about David Bowie as this mad creation.
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 love that Bob Dylan asked me to be in the first movie he wrote.
Unless a Western's made money - doesn't matter who made the money, doesn't matter what the subject is - if the last one didn't make any money, you can't make another one for a four-year period. Westerns more than any genre.
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.
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?
You can ask anyone who knows me, I've never said a racist or prejudiced thing in my life.
