Val Kilmer grew up in the San Fernando Valley the middle son of three boys (Mark the eldest; Wesley the youngest). During his high school years, Wesley drowned in the family's swimming pool, an incident Val claims inspired his subsequent performance in The Salton Sea (2002). Kilmer told Interview magazine during a 1991 conversation to promote The Doors (1991) that as a child, his family had employed a veteran of the Vietnam War, ongoing at the time, as a full-time babysitter. When the man found work elsewhere, the Kilmer family lost touch with him. Through Interview magazine they made an appeal for the Vietnam vet to reconnect with them.
His family has Scottish, Irish, Sephardic Jewish, Cherokee Native American (from a paternal great-grandmother), Swedish, German and distant Mongolian ancestry. He's the younger brother of Mark and older brother of Wesley.
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Kilmer is a second cousin of journalist and poet Joyce Kilmer. His paternal grandfather was a gold miner in New Mexico. He's a father, with Joanne Whalley, of daughter Mercedes Kilmer (born October 29, 1991) and son Jack Kilmer (born June 6, 1995). His parents divorced when he was 9 years old. His father, Eugene, died in 1993.
Born
Val Edward Kilmer
December 31, 1959 (age 52)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
vietnam veterans helpline
