The film was helmed by the Airplane! (1980) trio of Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker. In 1984’s Top Secret!, Val Kilmer played crooner Nick Rivers, who became embroiled in an espionage plot in East Germany. Val Kilmer got pranked on the set of Top Secret! The New York Times said that Kilmer was “bursting with ominous energy.” 4. As high school boozehound Eric, Kilmer made an impression. ABC actually aired the episode in primetime to reach a wider audience because they felt the topic was important enough to warrant more viewers. Kilmer appeared with Michelle Pfeiffer in One Too Many, which was about underage drinking. Kilmer got a chance to display his dramatic chops early in a 1985 episode of the ABC Afterschool Special, a daytime series that focused on hard-hitting social issues affecting teens of the day. Val Kilmer did an ABC Afterschool Special that didn't air after school. “Well, of course I minded, but of course I caved,” he wrote of being billed behind Bacon and Penn. Kilmer said taking the third lead role was not his preference, but the opportunity for Broadway was too great to pass up. In order to do the play, Kilmer said in his 2020 book, I’m Your Huckleberry: A Memoir, that he turned down a part in director Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 film The Outsiders, based on the 1967 S.E. He joined the production of the coming-of-age drama Slab Boys alongside Kevin Bacon and Sean Penn. Val Kilmer turned down The Outsiders to do Broadway.Īfter graduating from Juilliard, Kilmer turned to the New York stage. In 2020, Kilmer told The New York Times that the vocal exercises he was told to do there helped him communicate when his throat cancer began affecting his speech. The Juilliard training resonated throughout his life. (In 2003, actor Seth Numrich supplanted him when he was accepted by Juilliard at age 16.)

At 17, he was the youngest student to be accepted into the drama division at the time. After attending the Hollywood Professional School, Kilmer enrolled in the prestigious Juilliard School. Born Decemin Los Angeles, California, to Eugene Kilmer and Gladys Swanette Ekstadt, Kilmer’s grade school stage work developed his appetite for acting-something he was almost preternaturally good at.

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