Val Kilmer famous quotes

I liked being Doc Holliday. It's fun to be insightful and aristocratic, to stand up for your friend and make sacrifices for him. It was fun to be arrogant like he was and have the goods to back it up. He was a very noble character. Although, let's not forget, he did kill a lot of people.
-- Val Kilmer

#Fun #Character #Sacrifice

It's important to be yourself. What art does for everyone, helps you understand yourself and in a distilled way, whether it's a painting or a scene in acting or a joke. It distills something about everyday life that can be important to you.
-- Val Kilmer

#Being Yourself #Art #Everyday

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.
-- Val Kilmer

#Dog #War #Wags

Give me the compliments. I love compliments. I was born modest, but it wore off.
-- Val Kilmer

#Giving #Compliment #Born

The trick to being a good actor is getting so involved in your character that the camera disappears, the 50 bored guys eating doughnuts disappear, friends disappear. To get to that point when you don't have to think about it, you're just acting and reacting in those circumstances.
-- Val Kilmer

#Character #Thinking #Bored

In order to be an artist and an actor, like tackling the classics in the theater as well as film, there's lots of discipline, lots of work, physical work put in.
-- Val Kilmer

#Artist #Order #Discipline

I don't make any pretense about being normal. I'm not.
-- Val Kilmer

#Normal #Pretense

I'm very wary of news on television.
-- Val Kilmer

#News #Television

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.
-- Val Kilmer

#Art #Average #Years

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.
-- Val Kilmer

#Citizens #Rats #Criminals

Warren Beatty once told me that if someone's really stuck on you, find them their next boyfriend. But I could never do that.
-- Val Kilmer

#Next #Stuck

Peter Sellers was just a brilliant actor, and also comedic.
-- Val Kilmer

#Actors #Brilliant #Peter

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.
-- Val Kilmer

#Father #Mountain #Mexico

Mark Twain had a way of telling stories that shifts your consciousness away from labels.
-- Val Kilmer

#Stories #Way #Labels

Jim Thompson understood something about the serial killer before the psychology caught up to it, which is that they are detached to it and they do want to get caught.
-- Val Kilmer

#Psychology #Serial Killer #Want

Postman is a media analyst and his theory is that television doesn't influence our culture, but that it is our culture and the presidency and anything that relies on television.
-- Val Kilmer

#Media #Culture #Television

I never cultivated a personality. Almost everyone who is really famous has cultivated a personality.
-- Val Kilmer

#Personality

There was no one around called 'Val' when I was young, so I wanted to be John or Bill. Now I like it.
-- Val Kilmer

#Bills #Young #Wanted

That's the joy of art - it should be dangerous and challenging but it's just art - it's safe.
-- Val Kilmer

#Art #Joy #Challenges

It's a really weird thing, modern divorce. I found out I was getting divorced on television. That was kind of weird.
-- Val Kilmer

#Divorce #Television #Kind

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.
-- Val Kilmer

#Starting Over #Acting #Tasks

The Secret Service is a strange group. They don't really have a leader. It's not set up like a military. Each one is supposed to be able to act like a leader when something comes up.
-- Val Kilmer

#Military #Leader #Secret

Warner Bros offered me the next Batman, and the only reason that I didn't do it was because of The Saint.
-- Val Kilmer

#Next #Saint #Reason

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.
-- Val Kilmer

#Fun #Acting #Actors

It is a weird thing that actors have people applaud when they're done working. I still find that entertaining.
-- Val Kilmer

#People #Actors #Done

If you're in a hit movie, it's good to be in another hit movie straight away.
-- Val Kilmer

Without deadlines and restrictions I just tend to become preoccupied with other things.
-- Val Kilmer

#Restriction #Deadline

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.
-- Val Kilmer

#Interesting #People #Creative

Hollywood is wonderful, but it does eat its young.
-- Val Kilmer

#Hollywood #Doe #Wonderful

Daryl Hannah likes to goof around with fashion, but she does have pretty impeccable taste.
-- Val Kilmer

#Fashion #Taste #Likes

Being creative and making money in the theater is very challenging.
-- Val Kilmer

#Creative #Challenges #Making Money

Acting is very immediate.
-- Val Kilmer

#Acting

A lot of old guys in movies are like cowboys - they talk like cowboys and they dress like cowboys.
-- Val Kilmer

#Cowboy #Guy #Dresses

I respect people who can do both careers, like Will Smith and a couple of other people who have done it, but I just don't know when they sleep.
-- Val Kilmer

#Respect #Couple #Sleep

If you think that by threatening me you can get me to do what you want... well, that's where you're right. But - and I am only saying this because I care - there's a lot of decaffeinated brands on the market that are just as tasty as the real thing.
-- Val Kilmer

#Fake People #Real #Thinking

My perception is that I've never done anything but work really hard.
-- Val Kilmer

#Perception #Done

I can safely say that no one who has ever won an Oscar didn't want to win an Oscar.
-- Val Kilmer

#Winning #Oscars #Want

I love that Bob Dylan asked me to be in the first movie he wrote.
-- Val Kilmer

#Firsts #Bob #Dylan

I live on a ranch that's larger than Manhattan. That's a weird circumstance.
-- Val Kilmer

#Manhattan #Circumstances

I just don't think I've ever been comfortable at public functions and selling myself as an entity.
-- Val Kilmer

#Thinking #Selling #Entity

I sang the songs in 'The Doors'.
-- Val Kilmer

#Song #Doors

I have two children and they're young yet but all of the children that I know really inspire me.
-- Val Kilmer

#Children #Two #Inspire

I think death is just a transition to another state of consciousness.
-- Val Kilmer

#Thinking #Transition #Consciousness

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.
-- Val Kilmer

#Character #Thinking #Actors

I'm a character actor, but I look like a leading man.
-- Val Kilmer

#Character #Men #Looks

If you look up the definition of news in the dictionary, it isn't what you watch on TV.
-- Val Kilmer

#News #Definitions #Tvs

There is no normal life, there's just life. You live it.
-- Val Kilmer

#Meaningful #Normal #Normal Life

News is something that happens that matters to you, which is not most of what we watch on television.
-- Val Kilmer

#Television #Matter #Watches

Well I sure had been looking for a comedy for years without any success.
-- Val Kilmer

#Years #Comedy #Wells

The first play I saw was a Samuel Beckett play which was great.
-- Val Kilmer

#Play #Saws #Firsts

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.
-- Val Kilmer

#Brother #Father #Opportunity

It was very serious and I wanted to do something really different so there was this comedy called TOP SECRET.
-- Val Kilmer

#Secret #Serious #Different

You just don't understand humility until you have children and get divorced.
-- Val Kilmer

#Children #Humility #Divorced

Interesting characters are troubled characters. The only problem I've had in my business is very few people - unfortunately, very vocal - confusing the difficult role that I play with me. I play these guys, but I'm not like them. I've been accused of bein.
-- Val Kilmer

#Character #Play #Interesting

There are lots of actors who are awful people, but nobody talks about them being awful because they've made billions.
-- Val Kilmer

#People #Actors #Awful

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.
-- Val Kilmer

#Lying #Lucky #Plans

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.
-- Val Kilmer

#Years #Four #Matter

I saw the horizon. It's out there. And though I may not ever be able to touch it, it's worth reaching for.
-- Val Kilmer

#Dream #Vision #May

It's the first time that I've ever had an art show based on a film, but it's a photography collage.
-- Val Kilmer

#Photography #Art #Firsts

I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates when he said...I drank what?
-- Val Kilmer

#Thinking #Said #Immortal

I was looking for projects, as you always are, and I read this scene . . . and I'm in the Hollywood Hills. So I thought, 'This is interesting.' You have this setup that seems to be based in some reality and you can only wonder where Black's going to go with this.
-- Val Kilmer

#Reality #Interesting #Black

Mark Twain is as big as America. He really is.
-- Val Kilmer

#America #Bigs #Mark

Mark Twain created a new type of literature and not a lot of people can say that. Not a lot of people can say they're absolutely original and completely self-made.
-- Val Kilmer

#Self #People #Literature

Most films made about the future acquiesce toward death, and I don't want to be told how to define my future.
-- Val Kilmer

#Want #Film #Made

Why do women get paid less money? It doesn't make any sense.
-- Val Kilmer

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?
-- Val Kilmer

#Mean #Thinking #Names

There's nothing good about divorce.
-- Val Kilmer

#Divorce

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.
-- Val Kilmer

#Animal #People #Use