Val Edward Kilmer was born on December 31, 1959 in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, California, the second of the three sons of Eugene Kilmer and his wife. When Kilmer was nine years old, his parents divorced, and his mother moved to Arizona. Kilmer stayed behind in town of Chatsworth, California with his father. Val managed to become accepted to the Julliard School in New York, where he became the youngest person ever accepted to the drama department. During his time at Juilliard, Val appeared as Orestes, Macbeth, and Richard III, Greek tragedy and Shakespearean roles, as well as Henry IV and As You Like It. In 1981, while still at Juilliard, he starred in How It All Began, a play he co-authored. In 1983 he appeared Off Broadway in The Slab Boys with Kevin Bacon and Sean Penn. Val's other stage roles include: Hamlet, in Hamlet, at the 1988 Colorado Shakespeare Festival, and the 1992 Jacobean play about incest and murder 'Tis Pity She's a Whore performed at Joseph Papp's Public Theater.

In 1984 he made his film debut in "Top Secret", a parody espionage movies. In the following year, Kilmer made his first foray into television, as Eric in the ABC special One Too Many, a story about teenage. Among the other made-for-television movies in which he appeared were The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1986), The Man Who Broke 1,000 Chains (1987), and Gore Vidal's "Billy the Kid" (1989). Kilmer's next film role was that of the prankish student physicist Chris Knight in Martha Coolidge's Real Genius (1985). The movie elicited widely varying reviews, as did Kilmer's performance. Kilmer's long list of credits include Willow, The Doors, Tombstone, Batman Forever, True Romance, Thunderheart, Heat, The Saint, At First Sight, And The Salton Sea. In Addition, He Appeared In The 3-d Epic Wings Of Courage, as well as voicing the character of Moses in the DreamWorks animated film The Prince Of Egypt.

2004 will also see him as King Philip II of Macedonia in Oliver Stone's epic movie "Alexander". Kilmer will play the part of Alexander's father, played by Colin Farrell and husband of Olympias, played by Angelina Jolie. Val Kilmer presently resides in New Mexico. Val loves animals and has horses, dogs, cats, chickens and 3 buffaloes at his New Mexico ranch.