Val Kilmer

Over the course of two hours inside a small dressing room at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, Val Kilmer ages 20 years. His hair turns a crazy, curly white, a strong mustache sprouts on his upper lip, and deep bags appear under his eyes. Eventually the actor is nearly unrecognizable - instead, he's Mark Twain and ready for the one-man show "Citizen Twain. " "There's a part of the makeup that starts to become the way I understand Mark Twain," says Kilmer, sitting in the makeup chair.

Over the course of two hours inside a small dressing room at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, Val Kilmer ages 20 years. His hair turns a crazy, curly white, a strong mustache sprouts on his upper lip, and deep bags appear under his eyes. Eventually the actor is nearly unrecognizable - instead, he's Mark Twain and ready for the one-man show "Citizen Twain. " "There's a part of the makeup that starts to become the way I understand Mark Twain," says Kilmer, sitting in the makeup chair.

Val Kilmer plays a ponytailed villain in "MacGruber," the comedy film based on a "Saturday Night Live" skit, but lately he seems to have been cast as a real-life bad guy by neighbors in this rural mountain community. Aggrieved by a planning board's decision permitting Kilmer to rent out guesthouses on his 5,300-acre ranch, the neighbors charged that he had denied locals access to fishing holes in the nearby Pecos River and made ethnically insulting comments in magazine interviews.

Twixt Available on VOD beginning Tuesday Francis Ford Coppola's latest venture comes as another late-career trip into indie filmmaking, though more accessible than his previous efforts "Youth Without Youth" and "Tetro. " Val Kilmer plays an alcoholic horror writer who stops off in an eerie small town on a book tour and discovers a murder mystery that involves Edgar Allan Poe, a creepy preacher, a hotel full of dead girls, a grizzled sheriff and teenagers heavily into the occult.

The buzz in Hollywood this week is that "The Saint," starring Val Kilmer and Elisabeth Shue, is provoking decidedly mixed reviews but will nonetheless provide the strongest test yet of whether Kilmer is a bankable star. Paramount Pictures, which will release the action-adventure film in about 2,500 theaters Friday, could have a "franchise" film that spawns various sequels if "The Saint" can reach the $100-million level in ticket sales.

Although it seems like Hal Holbrook has owned the role of Mark Twain for decades, another actor has staked a theatrical claim to the white-haired novelist and wit. Val Kilmer has been working on "Citizen Twain," a solo play in which he plays the writer, for the past several years and presented a workshop version at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery last year. Kilmer -- who has starred in "Top Gun," "The Doors," "Heat" and "Batman Forever" -- will take his Twain play on the road for a short tour starting in April.

While the publicity people at Paramount Pictures have been working full time to tout "Top Gun," the studio's action-packed summer film about Navy fighter pilots, one of its featured players has been working overtime on a documentary film dealing with the ultimate fight--nuclear war. In fact, even at the world-premiere party for "Top Gun," held here in mid-May at the trendy Palladium, Val Kilmer was working on the film.

Holy hornet's nest, Batman! The New Mexico governor's mansion? Fresh from the inauguration, actor Val Kilmer is pondering running for governor in 2010, when two-term Democrat Bill Richardson will be forced from office by term limits. "I'm just looking for ways to be contributive," Kilmer said in an interview. "And if that ends up being where I can make a substantial contribution, then I'll run." Kilmer, 49, grew up in Los Angeles but has called New Mexico home for more than two decades.

What's the Saint doing in "The Saint"? Directed by Phillip Noyce, best known for "Patriot Games" and "Clear and Present Danger," both Tom Clancy adaptations, "The Saint" is meant to be that kind of James Bond/Batman franchise picture, a large-scale action adventure with running and chasing and things blowing up all over town.

It's a rehearsal on a sound stage at Paramount, the studio that produced Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 epic "The Ten Commandments." But almost 50 years after the DeMille extravaganza, it's not Charlton Heston, bronzed like a baby shoe, who's playing Moses; it's Val Kilmer. In 2004, "The Ten Commandments" is not a movie but a live stage musical making its U.S. debut Sept.

The violin of the Titanic bandleader, who played as he and bandmates went down with the ship, has been recovered, according to a British auction house. The instrument bears a message from the musician's sweetheart. "For Wallace, on the occasion of our engagement. From Maria. " Like the 1997 James Cameron movie, that story might spur a few tears. As the Agence France-Presse reports, auction house Henry Aldridge & Son says it has confirmed the violin is that of Wallace Hartley.

Although it seems like Hal Holbrook has owned the role of Mark Twain for decades, another actor has staked a theatrical claim to the white-haired novelist and wit. Val Kilmer has been working on "Citizen Twain," a solo play in which he plays the writer, for the past several years and presented a workshop version at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery last year. Kilmer -- who has starred in "Top Gun," "The Doors," "Heat" and "Batman Forever" -- will take his Twain play on the road for a short tour starting in April.

Click here to download TV listings for the week of Sept. 9 - 15 in PDF format This week's TV Movies   SUNDAY After Wednesday's opener, a new season of NFL Football kicks into high gear with a day's worth of games - including quarterback Peyton Manning's official debut in orange and blue when the Denver Broncos host the Pittsburgh Steelers. (NBC, 5:15 p.m.) The new special "9/11: Voices From the Air" uses cellphone messages, air traffic control transmissions and other recordings to reconstruct the events of that dark day in 2001.

A bad moon is rising in "Bloodworth. " The misfired hillbilly gothic stirs up a murky brew of old resentments, youthful hope and backwoods superstition in the story of an ill-fated and symbolically named Tennessee family. As members of that clan, Kris Kristofferson, Val Kilmer and Dwight Yoakam are compelling in beautifully lived-in, vanity-free performances, but the drama's escalating dread fizzles in a farcical pileup of disaster. Originally titled "Provinces of Night," after its source novel by William Gay, the film concerns the return to Tennessee of musician E.F. Bloodworth (Kristofferson)

Val Kilmer plays a ponytailed villain in "MacGruber," the comedy film based on a "Saturday Night Live" skit, but lately he seems to have been cast as a real-life bad guy by neighbors in this rural mountain community. Aggrieved by a planning board's decision permitting Kilmer to rent out guesthouses on his 5,300-acre ranch, the neighbors charged that he had denied locals access to fishing holes in the nearby Pecos River and made ethnically insulting comments in magazine interviews.

Cold-blooded reptiles are lurking everywhere in the slick new noir "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans," with snakes, iguanas, gators and especially Nicolas Cage at their slithering and cynical best. Director Werner Herzog opens the film with the snake just so we're clear that he will be exposing the seductive and duplicitous underbelly of things from the start. It's a beautiful shot, dark and silvery, with a water moccasin moving inland through the rising black tide of Hurricane Katrina.

Eighty years ago, Joyce Kilmer wrote, "I think that I shall never see / A poem lovely as a tree." Strong roots notwithstanding, the first famous Kilmer probably also never thought he'd see any of his descendants in 70 millimeter, larger than life and making female hearts go pitter-patter. But second cousin (twice removed) Val Kilmer, 33, with swept-back blond hair parted in the middle and sharp green eyes, is already known around the world as film's Jim Morrison from "The Doors."

New movies from Werner Herzog, Claude Chabrol and Ken Loach will be screened at AFI Fest 2009, organizers said Wednesday. The film festival will run from Oct. 30 to Nov. 7 in Hollywood and Santa Monica. Among the first dozen films unveiled were Herzog's "The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans," with Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes and Val Kilmer; Chabrol's "Bellamy," a mystery with Gerard Depardieu; and Loach's "Looking for Eric," about a soccer fanatic. Also being shown are Lee Daniels' "Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire," starring newcomer Gabourey Sidibe as a pregnant teenager in 1980s Harlem, and Bong Joon-ho's "Mother," a thriller from South Korea.