A Quote by Val Kilmer

Doing my first movie, I realized I could get into real bad habits. If you're the star, all you have to do is show up, and 20 people say, 'Do you want anything? What is it? Let me get it for you.' Believe me, you get spoiled very quickly. I saw some of my contemporaries allow themselves to have that fame, thinking they could handle it. It messed them up.
I'm not a movie star like other actors in the way that I need to walk around with a bodyguard. My goal is just to get some interesting parts and make enough money to live free. Otherwise, to be a movie star, it's a lot of compromise and also a lot of headaches. You can't do what you want. You become a prisoner of your fame. This happened to me in France and I don't want it. I want to go to the terrace of a café, have a coffee. I have no problems with the fact that people recognize me, I'm very glad about it, but to be a movie star is kind of unreal for me.
I knew I wanted to be in comedy but the path of least resistance was doing stand-up in folk music clubs where I could get on stage. I guess you could get up no matter how bad you were and you didn't have to audition. You just got up. Everything else required an audition and if you auditioned for a TV show, you would stand in line with a hundred other people. But at the clubs, it was okay just to get up, so that's why I started in stand-up.
You're always thinking, "What does that add up to?" You can't really get a handle on it. I was curious. I felt like it would be an interesting challenge for me to write down what I'd seen and done and learned - all the convolutions captured in one item that I could look at and get some grip on what the hell happened.
It's really helped a ton in the sense that we get to reach people who don't normally know our music. At least once a night at a show someone will come up to the merch table after the show and say they've never heard of me but they saw me on Troubadour, TX, and it reminds me that I'm not Elvis and anything I can do to get my name out there is beneficial in every way.
At some of the darkest moments in my life, some people I thought of as friends deserted me-some because they cared about me and it hurt them to see me in pain; others because I reminded them of their own vulnerability, and that was more than they could handle. But real friends overcame their discomfort and came to sit with me. If they had not words to make me feel better, they sat in silence (much better than saying, "You'll get over it," or "It's not so bad; others have it worse") and I loved them for it.
It was never a marketing tool. People say that, but I dress this way for the same reasons I did when I first started doing it. It still comes from a serious place inside of me. I get up in the morning, and I think I just look better a certain way I do my makeup. I want to shine, I want to glitter. I'm not getting up thinking, "Oh, this'll get 'em." And I'm not doing it to make a statement. I'm just doing it to look like Dolly - the Dolly that I know and the Dolly that you know.
I have some fond memories - a couple of the nights on the town ... a couple of songs I wrote when I was messed up that I'm sure wouldn't have come out of me unless I was messed up. It's kind of happy-sad about those days - I could do anything I wanted to. I did. And now I don't want to do any of that.
My intention with The Soup was to hopefully follow in the footsteps of past hosts, like Greg Kinnear. The pedigree of that show was really good and if it could just get me into some of those audition rooms I've always wanted to get into that I could not get into, then I would be very happy.
You see me. What you see is what you get. You get real martial arts, you get real fighting, you get a real warrior mentality. Some people aren't mature enough to handle it.
Your only guidepost is your own instinct and judicious editing. In my stand-up act I learned that in the first 10 minutes I could say anything and it would get a laugh. Then I'd better deliver. In the movie it's the same thing. You get a lot of laughs when people first sit down and then the story better kick in. Many years in front of an audience, I would hope, give me a sense of what works.
I remember my father telling me that just like Troy, he could get me in with the water department where he worked in New York. He talked about how he could get me on the job, and if I stayed 25 years, I could probably work my way up to be a supervisor and how it was a good union and all of the benefits and that I was going to make $20,000 in 50 years or whatever it was. He couldn't see that far.
Growing up, if I had been given any advice - bad or good - I probably wouldn't have been able to act on it regardless. I wasn't shy, but I'd get nervous. I got a little more confident later in high school when I realized I could get girls to pay attention to me by making them laugh.
I know a lot of guys say that when they are younger - 'I'm gonna get it, get my money, and get out' - and then end up wrestling until they're 50. But that could end up being me, too. I can tell you I want to get out early and end up eating my own words. All of a sudden, I'm 50, and I'm still walking out there.
I couldn't take my eyes off of Stan [Lee]! As good as the movie is, all I could think about is, "What's he thinking?" So the movie ended, and then he, very whimsically, expressed all of his feelings about how long he waited, and how the TV shows in the '70s were all, "If only they could do this," and now they could. And he didn't get choked up and blubbery, but he was moved. Like, "Ohmigod, it happened while I was alive." And I can't believe I got to see that. He was very raw. It was quite beautiful.
I am a very organized person. I get up at 6:15 a.m., the kids get up at 6:45 a.m., and so I get up and get it in. I’m addicted to the high function. To me it’s a work thing - if you meditate, you can get so much work done. I always say to people you know how about three nights a year you get a good night sleep? You can have it every day with meditation.
I really trust the authenticity of real people and my job is to get them to be themselves in front of the camera. Often what happens is, you'll get a newcomer in front of the camera and they'll freeze up or they imitate actors or other performances that they've admired and so they stop becoming themselves. And so my job as the director is just to always return them to what I first saw in them, which was simply an uncensored human being.
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