Val Kilmer's hellish behavior exposed in legacy-ruining detail by director: Bombshell new claims about what happened behind the scenes... and the unpublishable slur he used 'constantly'

When filmmaker Adam Marcus called the late Val Kilmer 'the worst human being,' he says he had no intention of 'kicking a dead man.'

Rather, he told the Daily Mail in an exclusive interview, he was simply airing grievances that he had been publicly sharing for years about the actor – who he said nearly made him quit Hollywood.

Marcus worked with Kilmer - who died last year of pneumonia at age 65 - on the 2008 film Conspiracy, a movie starring the Hollywood icon as a disabled special operations Marine whose friend mysteriously disappears.

And last week, the director went viral after sharing a Facebook post about the actor, in which he claimed that Kilmer was 'physically violent ... sexually harassed my female cast, was verbally abusive, on "something" almost every day, [and] 3-6 hours late to set on almost every day.'

'He was paid 1.5 million and acted completely unprofessional. And this is truly the tip of the iceberg of bad behavior,' Marcus claimed in his post, which was also circulated on Threads. 'If this guy did one-tenth of what he did on my set today, he would have been cancelled in a blink. Worst human being I've ever known… and that is really saying something.'

Marcus was met with 'a barrage of hate' for the post – which he 'immediately deleted' from Threads after it went viral – but doubled down on his claims to the Daily Mail: 'What I said about Val in that post was that he was the worst human I had ever met. That is true. There's no hyperbole to that.'

According to Marcus, Kilmer was a 'bully' who kicked him in the crotch, nearly fell off a cliff while 'out of his mind on painkillers and vodka,' used a homophobic slur and sexually harassed 'several' women on set.

During his life, Kilmer had developed a reputation for being difficult to work with, and several directors have claimed he was a disruptive presence - a complaint he addressed, admitting he was 'unhappy trying to make pictures better.'

As memories of Kilmer's reputation resurfaced after Marcus' viral post, accounts from several people who worked on Conspiracy now paint a complicated portrait of a 'brilliant' actor who made 'everyone's life hell.'

Marcus, a self-described 'giant' fan of Kilmer when they first started working together, said he was 'thrilled' to begin shooting Conspiracy with Kilmer. In fact, initially, Marcus found Kilmer to be 'lovely and collaborative.'

Marcus recalled his second reading with Kilmer during which the actor expressed his excitement at working with him.

'I turned to him and I said, "Well, Val, it's a moral imperative,"' Marcus continued, a nod to Kilmer's famous line in the 1985 cult classic Real Genius.

'His jaw dropped and he went, "You know Real Genius!?" I said, "Dude, that movie is like a top favorite of mine, and you're brilliant... of course, I know Real Genius."'

According to Marcus, Kilmer had also seen one of his movies, Let It Snow, at Sundance years prior and had fallen 'in love' with the film.

'So we had this mutual admiration for each other that was lovely,' Marcus said.

But that all changed once filming began in the Land of Enchantment.

'We got to New Mexico and a totally different person showed up,' Marcus claimed.

'When we started working together, he had just done Kiss Kiss Bang Bang with Robert Downey Jr, and he told me, "You know, because of Robert's sobriety, I really found my path and I'm a different guy,"' Marcus continued.

'"I know you've heard all the rumors about me, and the rumors are true,"' he recalled the actor saying. 'He said, "But I turned over a new leaf. I'm a new man," and I was like, "This is fantastic Val, let's just go make a great movie."'

Instead, the problems started to appear instantly.

Kilmer allegedly arrived to the first day of shooting 'alcohol poisoned' from the previous night and was administered an IV from an ambulance called to the set.

'Day one of the shoot, he showed up three hours late to set,' Marcus claimed. 'He was so alcohol poisoned from the night before that I had to get an ambulance to come to set to give him an IV.'

Unable to work for several more hours, an emotional Kilmer apologized profusely to Marcus for 'ruining' his movie.

'He couldn't work for another three hours. He held me, crying, sobbing. He's holding me, sitting there,' Marcus said.

'He's holding me, sobbing, and saying, "I'm sorry, I'm ruining your movie. I love you. I don't want this to go this way." And I said, "Well, then, hey, it's a new day. Let's start fresh. It's all good, no problem."'

But less than a week later Kilmer allegedly 'kicked' Marcus in the crotch.

'By day six, he showed up to set completely out of his mind. He was three hours late again. He was wearing a pair of Crocs, and he wanted me to see his new Crocs,' Marcus said.

'I said, "Val, hang on a second, I'm just setting up this shot,"' he continued. 'As I turned to my [director of photography], he kicked me in the crotch with his Crocs. I landed on the ground of my set.'

Kilmer apparently found the kick humorous, according to Marcus: 'When I landed on the floor, and I'm holding my testicles, because he just kicked me in them, he stood over me, giggling at me.'

But the problems persisted, including Kilmer's use of a homophobic slur that he repeated 'constantly.' Marcus claimed the actor hurled the slur at him after being kicked.

'I had to be lifted off the set and brought out,' Marcus said.

'As they're lifting me off, Val turns to my wife [Debra Sullivan], who's in the movie and was my co-author of the film ... then says to her in front of the entire cast and crew, "Hey, Debra, did you know your husband's an f-word?"'

Sullivan was also on the receiving end of the alleged misconduct, Marcus claimed.

'He tried to play grab a** with my wife, who smacked his hand away. He sexually harassed several women on the film,' he alleged.

Sullivan corroborated this account and the others shared by her husband in a phone call with The Daily Mail. 'He kept grabbing my a**,' she claimed.

Marcus claimed Kilmer gave him 'the finger' after he asked the actor to remove his headphones for a shot. At the time, Kilmer was working on his music album and had brought his laptop and headphones into a police car they were shooting a scene in, Marcus recalled.

'I said, "Val, headphones off, buddy... we're rolling." And he takes his hands off the steering wheel and starts giving me the finger,' he said.

Sony, the film's distributor, was not too happy with what they had witnessed, Marcus claimed.

'By the way, when Sony saw that, I got [an] immediate phone call: "What the hell's going on out there?"' Marcus claimed. 'I said, "What the hell's going on? We have an out of control star!"'

Marcus also said he saved an intoxicated Kilmer from teetering off of a cliff, grabbing him when his foot went off the edge while filming.

'He almost fell off a cliff during our shoot because he was so out of his mind on painkillers and vodka, which, by the way, is what he told me it was when he was sobbing to me,' he said.

Then, a wheelchair-bound 'superfan' who had flown out to see the actor also allegedly came into Kilmer's crosshairs.

Initially, Kilmer wanted the devoted fan on set, according to Marcus, but he apparently became 'annoyed' by her presence and asked that she be removed in the middle of a lightning storm.

'He got annoyed with her being there about 30 minutes into the visit. He's like, "Nah, I just don't want her here anymore." I was like, "Well, okay, but Val, there's a lightning storm outside."'

Yet Kilmer apparently insisted that she be removed. Marcus recalled him saying, 'Yeah, you will get her off set.'

'Cut to a producer wheeling a woman in a metal wheelchair through an electrical storm in New Mexico to get her off set, because Val didn't like her being there anymore,' Marcus said. 'By the way, the woman had done nothing wrong.'

Frustrated, Marcus complained about his star actor to producers - but his concerns allegedly fell on deaf ears. He said producers did 'nothing' about his concerns. Sony's handling of his alleged complaints is unclear.

'I complained to the producers of the film. They did nothing. I told Sony execs when I got back to LA and I don't know what happened from there,' Marcus claimed. 'There is a much longer story that follows but I don't have all the details of those events so I don't feel comfortable talking about it. I told everybody everything. No one did a damn thing.'

The Daily Mail has contacted Sony and producers on the film for comment.

'He almost made me leave the business,' Marcus admitted, later saying: 'He made everyone's life hell.'

An actor who appeared in Conspiracy confirmed the complaints made by Marcus in his social media post.

Jude Lanston, who had his first-ever movie role in Conspiracy, confirmed Marcus' complaints posted to social media. While he said that he had an 'amazing' experience acting opposite Kilmer, he claims he also witnessed the actor behaving badly.

'Honestly, working with him was amazing,' Lanston told the Daily Mail. 'He's a great actor.'

Kilmer even introduced himself to Lanston after they filmed their scenes, a move that took him aback. 'We do our scenes, shoot our coverages, and afterwards he comes over and introduces himself to me,' he recalled.

'He went out of his way to say hi. I shook his hand, and we had a really short conversation. And then he went back to his business. He's a star of the movie, he has more stuff to shoot and I was kind of floored and really impressed.'

Yet Lanston claimed to have witnessed Kilmer treating Marcus poorly.

'I hung around on the set because Adam was nice like that, and so I got to watch other things shooting. I was trying to soak up as much experience as I could because I had literally none.

'And then I saw how he treated everybody else,' he said. 'He kicked the guy in the nuts.'

When asked about Marcus' social media post, Lanston said: 'Everything was true.'

One source told the Daily Mail: 'Val was one of those actors who got away with being difficult to work with. What the director said is accurate about him being difficult to work with.'

The Daily Mail has contacted Kilmer's family for comment on Marcus's claims.

A representative for Kilmer's son, Jack Kilmer, said: 'No comment and this is just ridiculous.'

But the allegations made by Marcus are not how others from Conspiracy remember Kilmer.

'I can tell you it was an honor to work with Val Kilmer,' Christopher Gehrman, the actor who played 'E.B.' in the film, told The Daily Mail. 'There were some big egos on that set and some of them were movie stars and some of them have very few credits.'

Jennifer Esposito, who also starred in Conspiracy, said she had a 'fine' experience working on the film.

'I was fine. I was fine, as I always am. You learn at a very young age on sets to fend for yourself,' Esposito told the Daily Mail.

'And listen, being on the other side of things now and seeing from a director's point of view, there's a whole different respect that you get and the things that need to be done. So if that was the director's experience, that was his experience,' Esposito, who directed the 2023 film Fresh Kills, said. 

Of Kilmer, she said, 'Let's leave this man to rest in peace.' Indeed, she was keen to focus on the 'bad behavior' of living men rather than the late Kilmer.

'I will just say the bad behavior of men on sets - we can talk about 95,000 of them that are alive. I think we should start there before we discuss anyone who's dead,' she said.

Marcus, for his part, insists he harbors no 'ill will' towards the late star, noting that he has been complaining publicly about Kilmer for years.

Indeed, four years before Kilmer passed, Marcus said in a 2021 interview with the Scarifyer Podcast: 'Val Kilmer is the single worst person I've ever known. Full stop. Guys, we're six days into the film I'm shooting with him and he assaulted me on set. Kicked me in the balls, and he thought it was hilarious.'

'He was inebriated and on painkillers and he kicked me in the balls,' he added.

And Marcus is not the first filmmaker who had a bone to pick with Kilmer.

Batman Forever director Joel Schumacher called him 'childish and impossible' as well as a 'psychologically disturbed human being' during an interview with Entertainment Weekly in 1996.

'[Kilmer] was being irrational and ballistic with the first AD, the cameraman, the costume people,' he said at the time. 'He was badly behaved, he was rude and inappropriate. I was forced to tell him that this would not be tolerated for one more second.

'Then we had two weeks where he did not speak to me but it was bliss!'

Oliver Stone also struggled working with Kilmer in the 1991 Jim Morrison biopic, The Doors, though he did cast him again in 2004's Alexander.

'His personality was not easy to get along with,' he told RogerEbert.com in 2025 of working with Kilmer on The Doors. 'Creative people are often self-involved, and there was a fair amount of stuff you'd expect to see from an eccentric young actor in Hollywood—although, even by those standards, Val was pretty out there.'

'He did a great job, but he was not happy with me or himself, and he was very troubled in many ways,' he recalled. 'At the end of the movie, he hurt me by saying things to me that were not kind. It was a bitter experience in a sense, you know: 'Goodbye. Go to hell.' That kind of thing.'

Richard Stanley, Kilmer's director on The Island of Dr Moreau, told Entertainment Weekly: 'I don't like Val Kilmer, I don't like his work ethic, and I don't want to be associated with him ever again.'

Kilmer previously addressed his reputation for being difficult on set, attributing his behavior to his devotion to acting and willingness to take risks.

'I didn't do enough hand holding and flattering and reassuring to the financiers,' he said during a Reddit Ask Me Anything in 2017. 'I only cared about the acting and that didn't translate to caring about the film or all that money.

'I like to take risks and this often gave the impression I was willing to risk their money not being returned, which was foolish of me.

'I understand that now. And sometimes when you are the head of a project and the lead actor is usually the reason a film is being made, unless its a superstar director, then its only fair to make people feel good and happy they are at work. I was often unhappy trying to make pictures better.'

Poignantly, in his 2021 documentary Val, Kilmer acknowledged his own behavior.

'I have behaved poorly. I have behaved bravely. I have behaved bizarrely to some,' he said. 'I deny none of this and have no regrets because I have lost and found parts of myself that I never knew existed. And I am blessed.'