February 8th, 2009
This is several years old and I’m sure at least some of you have seen it before. But wow. It’s from an interview in Esquire magazine:
The conversation evolves into a meditation on the emotional toll that acting takes on the artist. I ask him about the “toll” that he felt while making the 1993 western Tombstone. He starts talking about things that happened to Doc Holliday. I say, “No, no, you must have misunderstood me. I want to know about the toll it took on you.” He says, “I know, I’m talking about those feelings.” And this is the conversation that follows:
Me: You mean you think you literally had the same experience as Doc Holliday?
Kilmer: Oh, sure. It’s not like I believed that I shot somebody, but I absolutely know what it feels like to pull the trigger and take someone’s life.
Me: You understand how it feels to shoot someone as much as a person who has actually committed a murder?
Kilmer: I understand it more. It’s an actor’s job. A guy who’s lived through the horror of Vietnam has not spent his life preparing his mind for it. He’s some punk. Most guys were borderline criminal or poor, and that’s why they got sent to Vietnam. It was all the poor, wretched kids who got beat up by their dads, guys who didn’t get on the football team, couldn’t finagle a scholarship. They didn’t have the emotional equipment to handle that experience. But this is what an actor trains to do. I can more effectively represent that kid in Vietnam than a guy who was there.
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