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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
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.
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.
Peter Sellers was just a brilliant actor, and also comedic.
My children have absolutely no interest in my fame. They're very sophisticated, and they have a spiritual perspective on material things because we go to church.
Well I sure had been looking for a comedy for years without any success.
I just don't think I've ever been comfortable at public functions and selling myself as an entity.
Hollywood is wonderful, but it does eat its young.
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.
If you're in a hit movie, it's good to be in another hit movie straight away.
I would probably do anything with David Mamet. He's so great. I just love his writing.
Partly because the town is just finicky, there are strange Catch 22 clauses in the consciousness of this community and one of them was that you, I found out, you can't do a comedy unless you've just done a comedy.
When you're young, you're always concerned about how you're being seen and how you're being criticized.
Youth is seen as everything. You don't know anything when you're young. It's great being older, just having a more balanced perspective. I wake up and realise that what seemed to be important last year no longer is. I'm increasingly grateful for every day.
It is a weird thing that actors have people applaud when they're done working. I still find that entertaining.
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?
With legitimate journalists I've always had a great time - I've never gone out of my way to court the press. That's probably cost me some money, but I've always had the respect of my peers.
Mark Twain had a way of telling stories that shifts your consciousness away from labels.
I'm a character actor, but I look like a leading man.
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.
I can safely say that no one who has ever won an Oscar didn't want to win an Oscar.
Why do women get paid less money? It doesn't make any sense.
Warner Bros offered me the next Batman, and the only reason that I didn't do it was because of The Saint.
My perception is that I've never done anything but work really hard.
I think death is just a transition to another state of consciousness.
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.
It's fun to look at people that are so good at acting that aren't actors, like David Bowie creating a mystique about Rock&Roll. I've listened to 'Ziggy Stardust' as much as any Rock&Roll fan - I don't really know what it's about, but it sure is fun to think about David Bowie as this mad creation.
I am not an American; I am the American.
It's the first time that I've ever had an art show based on a film, but it's a photography collage.
A lot of old guys in movies are like cowboys - they talk like cowboys and they dress like cowboys.
Acting is very immediate.
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.
That's the joy of art - it should be dangerous and challenging but it's just art - it's safe.
Being creative and making money in the theater is very challenging.
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.
Without deadlines and restrictions I just tend to become preoccupied with other things.
The first play I saw was a Samuel Beckett play which was great.
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.
News isn't even the truth on television.
I live on a ranch that's larger than Manhattan. That's a weird circumstance.
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.
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.
I've been very fortunate and met the guys that have become, basically, philosophers and have a kind of sensibility about life that's very precious.
If you look up the definition of news in the dictionary, it isn't what you watch on TV.
It's a really weird thing, modern divorce. I found out I was getting divorced on television. That was kind of weird.
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.
Mark Twain is as big as America. He really is.
There are a thousand ways to play any role.
I sang the songs in 'The Doors'.
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.
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