ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST
Just outside Santa Fe, actor Val Kilmer undertook what he describes as a "Pueblo-style" renovation of a 1970s house. "I wanted to establish a sensibility that would be reflective of the values of the land and of the style, movement and tradition of the area."
Article by Nancy Collins
Photography by Robert Reck
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To even have a chance of doing anything unique, you have to know who you are," says actor Val Kilmer. "As a result, you should live where you feel most yourself."
For the star of The Saint (1997) and the upcoming At First Sight, that is Santa Fe--a place where the facts of land bump up against mysticism on a daily basis. "There's something very hard and dangerous about the cliffs here--they're not solid granite, so rocks can move and you can die climbing. Yet in the midst of that jagged canvas you'll suddenly come upon this crazy, Barnum and Bailey burst of wildflowers -- Day-Glo orange sprinkled with purple -- the perfect bouquet." He pauses, smiling. "There's irony here -- like in life."For the classically trained actor who electrified Jim Morrison on-screen in The Doors (1991) and then went on to re-create the Caped Crusader in Batman Forever (1995), irony is familiar terrain. |
| Known for his brilliant, often tempestuous talent, Kilmer has staked his claim in territory as unpredictable as the man himself. "In New Mexico it's easier to understand that there's more than one absolute," says Kilmer, whose love affair with the Southwest dates back to his California boyhood and family camping trips to Arizona and New Mexico. (Kilmer grew up in the San Fernando Valley, next door to Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. "When Trigger died, they stuffed him -- standing on his hind legs -- and put him in the living room," he recalls. "Then their dog Bullett died, and they did the same thing to him. We were always afraid that if Dale dies, we'd walk in one day and find her, stuffed and holding a tray, in the kitchen." |
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