Val Kilmer may have left behind a celebrated legacy marked by recognizable performances. However, he seemed to have rubbed some of his colleagues the wrong way during his acting career. One of them, Adam Marcus, the director of his 2008 movie, Conspiracy, recently slammed the late actor, who passed away from pneumonia a year ago, on social media.
Conspiracy director makes brutal comment about Val Kilmer
In a now-deleted Threads post, director Adam Marcus recalled the time he and Val Kilmer worked together on the movie Conspiracy. He shared a photo of himself and the actor, whom he called a “putz,” from the set of the film.
“#MicroIntellectMonday to that time when I directed that guy. The guy who played Iceman and Doc Holiday [sic],” he wrote (via Entertainment Weekly). “You know the one. Here’s me and the Putz working it out on the set of Conspiracy.”
Expecting backlash from fans for insulting the actor, he shared his reasoning for his disregard for what he referred to as “don’t speak ill of the dead bullsh***” in the Top Gun star’s case. Without specifying what Kilmer did, he added that if the latter “did one-tenth of what he did on [his] set today,” he would have been instantly canceled.
Marcus concluded by labeling the Tombstone star the “worst human being” he ever knew. He further remarked, “And that is really saying something.”
Notably, the filmmaker is not the only one who has admitted to not getting along with Kilmer, who developed a reputation for being difficult to work with. The late Joel Schumacher, who directed the actor in Batman Forever, wasn’t too fond of their collaboration either. He labeled the latter “childish and impossible” and a “psychologically disturbed human being,” while talking about him in a 1996 EW interview.
Meanwhile, John Frankenheimer, whom Kilmer worked with on The Island of Dr. Moreau, said that he would not choose to collaborate with him again.
Kilmer has addressed the criticism several times. For instance, in a 2003 Rolling Stone interview, he admitted he was “careless” about how he viewed acting. He continued, “But I trust that the truth is the truth and a lie is a lie. Frankenheimer, bless him, he passed on, but he had a history of being mean about people.”
