Val Kilmer was born in Los Angeles, California on December 31, 1959 to Eugene and Gladys Kilmer. He knew right away that he wanted to get into acting and he studied at a young age at Hollywood's Professional's School where he found great success. He started auditioning for commercials at age 13 and then became the youngest person to ever be accepted into the Juilliard School Of Drama. In 2002 his age record for acceptance into Juilliard was broken but it was a record he held for many years. He got his start in acting on the stage and has continued to excel and appear on stage with roles in such productions as Hamlet in 1988 at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. But he was introduced to the world in the 1984 spy movie spoof Top Secret! where he played the blonde haired rock star that the foreign girls all fainted over. The movie was completely silly and was never really meant to be a hit but it still caught on and made a profit and Val Kilmer was on his way.

Val Kilmer is not a huge fan of comedy but after his minor success in Top Secret! he was offered a role in the 1985 comedy Real Genius where he was to play a spaced out laser prodigy who wound up being too smart for his own good. Val Kilmer took the role and Real Genius did not turn out to be nearly as successful as Top Secret! and Val Kilmer decided to lay off the comedy for a little while. He was looking for his next project when he was told about the role of Iceman in the upcoming Tom Cruise movie Top Gun. Val Kilmer wanted nothing to do with Top Gun but he was bound by contract to the studio to make the movie so he begrudgingly made his appearance in the 1986 smash hit and it wound up bringing Val Kilmer to an entirely new level of fame as Top Gun went on to become one of the biggest grossing movies of all time. Val Kilmer continued to take on dramatic roles including a role in the 1988 fantasy movie Willow where he broke his foot during production but kept on going for the sake of the movie. Then in 1991 he achieved super stardom.

Oliver Stone had announced that he was making a documentary movie about the influential rock band The Doors and was looking for his Jim Morrison. Val Kilmer expressed interest in the part but Stone was not sure if Val Kilmer would be right for the role so Kilmer sent Stone a video tape of Kilmer performing Doors songs. Kilmer prefers using video tape as opposed to a personal audition and when Stone saw and heard the incredible likeness that Kilmer had to Jim Morrison he gave Kilmer the role. The rest, as they say, is history. The Doors movie did not become a financial success but Kilmer was given rave reviews for his portrayal of Jim Morrison and soon the acting world opened up to Val Kilmer. He rejected some roles because he could sense that he was getting typecast as a Hollywood hunk and wanted to avoid that career killing title if he could. Today he spends as much time acting on the stage as he does in movies and there will be a resurgence in Val Kilmer movies in the near future as he has been very busy lately making new movies and negotiating to make more.