Poor oul Val. Shone bright between 1985 and 1995 with "Top Secret", "Top Gun", "Real Genius", "Tombstone", "Heat" and the massively underrated/under-seen "Thunderheart". Ended up burning out and getting on the straight to DVD production line with Christian Slater, Bruce Willis and John Travolta.
He's undeniably brilliant as Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone's polarising "The Doors". Singing all the songs for the soundtrack - after getting a Doors sound-alike band together in a room and recording several tracks then getting his agent asking Stone to figure out which ones were Morrison and which ones Val had sung on. The trick of it being that (if memory serves me) they were all Val Kilmer on vocals.
My favourite story about Val Kilmer is on "The Doors" special edition DVD special features, Frank Whaley who played Robbie Krieger in the film (and also played Brett in "Pulp Fiction") is being interviewed 15 years or whatever after the fact.
"So Val Kilmer walks onto set, day one and he's dressed as Morrison, he's talking like Morrison and acting like Morrison. I wander over and say 'Hey, Val - it's Frank we met in New York". Val looks me up and down as says 'My name is Jim - I don't know a Frank from New York'. Then he walked off. Oliver Stone calls us all together and say that Val wants to be known as Jim for the entire shoot. So... I called him "Fucking Asshole" for the duration".
