by Val Kilmer
Like Moses, I said no. I said I didn’t want the job. In essence, I believe I said no to the Fates because, unlike Moses, I would never pick up the staff. To this day I wonder whether I denied my destiny. Or should I say, I was pretty damn sure I was running away from my destiny.
I was just very, very scared.
The second opportunity came a little later from Tadashi Suzuki, considered the Japanese Stanislavski. He headed the Suzuki Company of Toga. His reputation was that of an intense and rigorous director and maestro. I read that when his workshops were over, the participants were dripping in sweat and on the verge of collapse. I had met his lead actor, a Japanese-Chinese woman. Watching her perform, I was spellbound. She was Brando. She was on that level. She took acting to a place of sublimity I had never known existed. She also saw me perform at THE Juilliard School. Each year she and Suzuki offered two Americans the chance to study at Toga. I was chosen. I could have gone. Learned a whole new method. Immersed myself in a whole new culture. And gone on to star in obscure plays for the rest of my life. I would have had a modest but comfortable income. And lead the life of a pure artist. Again, I ran away from destiny, this time passing up the chance to study with Suzuki to instead live with Cher atop Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Tadashi Suzuki
Cher Likes My Harley
I was sitting alone in a mid-Manhattan restaurant eating pasta when a lady friend came up and said, “Someone is interested in meeting you.”
“Who?”
“Cher.”
Well, if it had been 1960 and that word had been Bardot, I would have jumped out of my seat. But Cher was different. Her name shocked me to the point that I spit out my spaghetti while exclaiming, “No!”
I saw Cher as a less-than-fascinating character out of the gossip rags. I was not motivated to meet her, not out of snobbery but simply because I was sure we had nothing in common.
“Our conversation wouldn’t last more than three minutes,” I said.
“You don’t know her,” said our friend.
“True. But why are you pushing so hard?”
“Her real personality is different than her TV personality. I guarantee, she’s the funniest person you’ll ever meet.”
Because our friend was nearly frantic to facilitate the encounter, I conceded. It happened on another night in another restaurant where there must have been ten people at the table. I’d been told that if I did not find Cher compelling, I could leave. I stayed. Cher was funny, hysterically funny. I ended up driving her home on the back of my Harley through the streets of Manhattan. She loved the Harley. We both loved laughing and went on doing so for well over a year. At the same time, to perfect her teeth, she was wearing braces. I joked that they gave her the look of her emotional age: fourteen. I used to tell her when she turned sixteen I would buy her a Porsche.
Cher was living in New York, where she was pursuing an acting career that got off to a roaring start with Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, directed for both Broadway and film by Robert Altman. Cher was—and is, and will always be—formidable. The year we met I was twenty-one, and Cher, then in her midthirties, looked even younger than I did. She chastised me for constantly carrying around a copy of Ulysses as if it were a purse, a move she thought was pretentious if not horrifyingly nerdy. I was nonetheless smitten (and flattered and aroused and exhilarated) to be with so glamorous a star who had dated men as diverse as David Geffen and Gregg Allman. After her successful run on Broadway, her intention was to return to California. She wanted me to go back with her. I wasn’t eager to leave the stage, and this was the moment when Tadashi Suzuki offered me a chance to study with him. It was a difficult decision. Or was it? Maybe I want to call the decision difficult in order to sound more profound. Maybe the decision to leave New York and go to Hollywood with Cher was actually easy.
Post–THE Juilliard School, New York had been easy. I had been certain that my big Broadway break would be Slab Boys, the work of John Byrne, a Scotsman who wrote a gripping autobiographical reflection of his experience in a carpet plant where working-class boys are looking to escape the tedium of their labor. The two leads are restless youths who worship James Dean and Elvis. The distinguished director, Robert Allan Ackerman, promised me the lead but then asked if I would mind taking the second lead since Kevin Bacon, fresh off Diner, was available. Eager to work, eager to shine on Broadway, I agreed. Next thing I knew, Ackerman had another request. Since Sean Penn, fresh off his role as stoned-out surfer Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, was also available, would I mind taking the third? Well, of course I minded, but of course I caved. I had no leverage. My character, unlike the cutting-edge sweating-and-swearing tough guys played by Kevin and Sean, was a clean-cut square on his way to a white-collar position. He was the butt of every joke. It was humiliating. Yet I accepted. I was so enamored of appearing on Broadway that I turned down a part offered by Francis Ford Coppola for The Outsiders, a role that went to Matt Dillon or Tom Cruise or Patrick Swayze or Rob Lowe or Emilio Estevez, I can’t remember which.
With Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon in Slab Boys, 1983
During Slab Boys’s run, Kevin Bacon was cool but Sean Penn was boiling hot. I remember Sean got into a couple of fights. He once showed up with a black eye. I had never been in a fight. I had always been able to avoid them. Brando used to show me all the scars on his hands from bar fights. He told me it was a dead end and not to go down that road. But he seemed to be pleased to tell me about that road I was not to go down. He said his dad was a bar fighter, too. I said I knew. He said how, and I said because of how he said it in Last Tango in Paris. He said that was perceptive. I said maybe not that perceptive as perhaps I read it in an interview. I honestly couldn’t remember but I did remember how convinced I was when in Bertolucci’s film he talked about his dad being a “bar fighter, whore f—r.”
The whole experience of the play was bittersweet. Great being on Broadway but difficult being relegated to third place. I did discover, though, that I could play the Good Guy. It became part of my artistic arsenal. As time went on, the Good Guy became an archetype that certain directors saw me fulfilling. In future films—I’m thinking of Thunderheart, The Island of Dr. Moreau, and The Ghost and the Darkness—I played an innocent who required a world-weary badass (Sam Shepard in Thunderheart, Marlon Brando in The Island of Dr. Moreau, and Michael Douglas in The Ghost and the Darkness) to shock me into reality.
Which brings up an interesting point. How does a young actor come of age in a reality principally defined by unreality? The theater isn’t real. Movies aren’t real. They’re reflections of reality. They’re art, and art means artifice, and artifice is artificial. That doesn’t mean that the artificial is superficial. The artificial can be genuine and seem real. But seem is different than is. The play ends. The movie is over. The actor goes home. But the actor is eager to move from the unreality of one drama to the unreality of another. In other words, the excitement of life onstage rivals life offstage. So to compensate, the actor feels compelled to goose up his offstage life with as much drama as possible. I say this not to rationalize or excuse. I may well have undermined my life several times even if I weren’t an actor caught up in unreality. But I was an actor, I am an actor, and I’d be lying if I said that my perception of reality hasn’t largely been defined by an ever-growing hunger for high drama. The best actors are magical people capable of magical thinking whose lives, for better or worse, become a series of magical revelations.
Being with Cher in New York was pure magic. She encouraged my acting. When the run of Slab Boys ended and Edmund White, an extraordinary novelist and chronicler of his times, cast me in his play as a young lover, she was as pleased as I was. After rehearsals Cher would wait for me outside the theater and whisk me away to the movies or dinner or to see a great play.
David Warrilow performing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, 1985
The main thing I remember about White’s play was the illumi
nating presence of one of my fellow actors, the great David Warrilow. In his memoir City Boy, White referred to him as “one of the leading interpreters of Samuel Beckett.” And David certainly did open my eyes to Beckett’s genius. But David was also a superb classical actor. In my same pre-Hollywood stage life, David, Patti LuPone, and I did As You Like It at the Guthrie during a freezing Minneapolis winter. It was cold out and sold out. David was the absolute epitome of a seasoned Shakespearean actor. Each night I watched him with wonder. He had mastered the mellifluous cadence of Elizabethan speech. Though I played Orlando, the romantic lead, and David played Jaques, a highly cynical malcontent, David’s performance stole the show.
We stayed friends. He gave me a first edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, which, like the work of Twain, became a guiding light. I treasure that book, along with a first edition of Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health, above all others. After As You Like It closed, David moved to Paris, where he tested positive for AIDS. I went to see him. The deterioration was horrific. We sat and watched television, a medium he despised. He was fed by a nurse and his speech, once thrillingly inspiring, became infantile. He died at sixty. France honored him as a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres, one of their highest accolades for a citizen, but it wasn’t enough. There should be a statue. There will be one day. David put the art through his body and it became spiritual. His voice, his movement, his courage—he went all the way most of the time. Oh, David… I wish you could have enjoyed a longer life and been spared such a painful demise. I wish the world had recognized and rewarded you with the extravagance you merited. I thank the universe that, for those precious few years, I was graced by your company. Great actors are great teachers, and you were both.
In a similar way, for all her frivolity, Cher was a teacher. She taught me that unabashed ambition was not to be judged. It was to be followed. She followed her instincts for show-business survival with such skill, only a fool would have failed to note her techniques. Of course there was her indisputable talent. Beyond that, there was her talent for knowing exactly the right platform on which to present that talent. That platform was Hollywood. I followed her there and struggled not to judge myself for doing so.
With Cher at the BAFTA Awards in London, 1984
The simple truth is that Cher made the move irresistible. Cher traffics in intoxicating glamour and I, a Valley boy, fell under her spell. Always dressed to the hilt, always aware of where the press would pursue her and how to put herself in the best light, Cher was a consummate pro. She might have been lobbying for a part, she might have been jealous of a new star, or she might have been missing someone she loved. She calculated and celebrated, as charming as she was cunning. Her superstardom survival is remarkable. She is one of those rare artists who, having triumphed in music and film, has created a category of her own. She’s as bright a star as we’ve got.
Being ushered into the Cher world was heady stuff.
I was with her when she found film success. As a mom with extraordinary empathy and soul, she was brilliant in Mask. Through her good offices, I myself auditioned for a part in Mask, but director Peter Bogdanovich wasn’t moved.
I didn’t know it, but my own success was around the corner. Which reminds me of a felicitous phrase: God wants us to walk but the devil sends a limo.
Top Secret!
A little before Cher triumphed in Mask, I was cast in my first film, the starring role of Top Secret!, made by the crew of Airplane! It was a goofy spoof of spy flicks. That crew—Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker—had written The Kentucky Fried Movie. I was wild for that film. At fifteen, I was a regular at the Kentucky Fried Theater on Pico Boulevard, a block west of 20th Century Fox, where Abrahams and the Zuckers staged evenings of side-splitting sketches. Having spent the past few years on How It All Began, I needed a laugh. Their methodology was deceptively simple—nonstop sight gags, a laugh-out-loud line every sixty seconds, a comedic symphony for the senses. Top Secret! continued the Kentucky Fried Movie and Airplane! lineage by setting its story in East Germany, where Nick Rivers, a pretty-boy Ricky Nelson–style rocker, saves the day. I got to play Nick. That meant I got to sing and play guitar.
Back in Chatsworth, when high school musicals were all the rage and Mare Winningham was enjoying rave reviews for her rendition of The Sound of Music, I was not inclined to follow in her footsteps. I could sing but didn’t see singing as my strength. Yes, I loved singing and was fanatical for raucous rock and roll and hot-blooded rhythm and blues, but when it comes to theater, give me the serious roles. Give me the classics.
On the set of Top Secret! with Jim Abrahams, Jim Carter, David Zucker (crouched), and Jerry Zucker
I spent four months learning the guitar to the point where my fingers were raw. I was hardly Eric Clapton but I wasn’t terrible. But because the writers-directors trafficked in perversity, on the first day of shooting they said I should just pretend to play the guitar—just strum it lightly. “Wait a minute,” I said, four months and ten raw fingers later, “you don’t want me to play it?” They smiled. They had simply wanted to see my expression when I learned that all my work would be in vain.
The film carried the vibe of an Elvis-in-Hawaii movie to Eastern Europe—John le Carré meets Happy Days. The whole thing made me happy. I even got to slip in a Cher poster on the wall of my character’s prison cell. (Cher loved it.)
Most of the film was shot in Pinewood Studios outside London. I found a flat in the city, and as I got situated I phoned reception at the local Christian Science church in search of some grounding. When I shared my location, the kind operator said, “Look across the street. See that dome? That’s our church.”
Suddenly I felt centered. And blessed.
Doubly blessed, actually, because the church was near the Royal Court, a famous theater. After spending the day as Nick Rivers singing “Skeet Surfing,” a song about shooting skeet with a shotgun while surfing, I was ready for something serious. I walked the few blocks from my flat to experience what I hoped would be the glory of English acting. I don’t remember much about the play, The Genius, but the lead actress, twenty-one-year-old Joanne Whalley, stole my heart. It wasn’t the first time I had fallen in love, nor was it the first time I had fallen in love at first sight. But it was the first time I fell in love at first sight from a distance.
“The eye is the lamp of the body,” said Jesus, “and if your vision is clear, your whole body will be full of light.”
Looking at Joanne, I felt filled with light. The distance from my seat to the stage seemed the distance from earth to heaven. Joanne had a unique combination of beauty and toughness. (I later found out that she came of age in Manchester, a notoriously tough British town.) During the course of this play she wore a black leotard. Her body was perfect. Like a dancer, she was lighter than air. She floated. She possessed the dazzling grace of balance. The play was flawed, but she was not. I was overwhelmed. I desperately wanted to meet her. Yet I didn’t. In explaining why, I may shock you.
Joanne Whalley
I was shy. Yes, I was a performer. Yes, I was still dating Cher, although she was in California and I was in London. Yes, I was playing a swaggery rocker in a crazy comedy, but there nonetheless was an aspect of myself that in certain situations would retreat—retreat but also advance.
After each performance of The Genius, I waited by the stage door until Joanne emerged. I followed her and her fellow thespians down the street to the corner pub. I watched her drink, watched her smile, watched her exchange pleasantries with her peers, watched her laugh, watched her yawn, and watched her leave. I did not follow her further. I knew better than to stalk. I kept my distance and I never—not once—introduced myself.
What would I have said? I’m Val Kilmer, starring as a rock star in a spy spoof. Surely, you’ve heard of The Kentucky Fried Movie and Airplane! Oh, you haven’t. Well, let me explain. You see, it’s a strangely American form of comedy…
No. That wouldn’t work. I d
idn’t have a come-on line. I’ve never had come-on lines.
Despite my rebellion at THE Juilliard School, the place had made its mark. It had reinforced my notion of myself as a serious stage actor. And yet, here I was, floating in a sea of Hollywood fluff, however funny that fluff might have been. My rationalization was based on truth. It was based on Brando.
Brando is the benchmark. I read how he was crucified for taking the role of Sky Masterson in the film version of the musical Guys and Dolls, in which Frank Sinatra played Nathan Detroit. This was 1955, the year Brando had won the Academy Award for playing Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront, perhaps (along with Stanley Kowalski in Streetcar) his greatest role. I remember loving Guys and Dolls and loving Brando’s performance. In one interview, when a reporter accosted him for selling out, he bristled and said he had done the film because it was the most challenging thing offered him. Even more so than playing Mark Antony in Julius Caesar. Why? Well, because he had to sing and he wasn’t a singer. Not only did he sing, but he did so when his costar was Frank Sinatra, America’s most celebrated vocalist. That’s the same kind of bravery that marked the careers of Katharine Hepburn and Charles Laughton, actors who traded in a euphoric emporium of art and dreams. They knew it’s not about fame. It’s about spirit. It was Brando who put in my head the idea that echoed my father’s dream with the Native American: acting is about facing your fears and trusting that even if you fall off the cliff you are not going to die.
