Director: Val Kilmer 'Was the Worst Human Being I've Ever Known'

Val Kilmer's reputation is taking fresh fire from a director who says working with the late actor was a nightmare. Adam Marcus, who directed Kilmer in the 2008 thriller Conspiracy, used a Sunday Threads post to blast the star, sharing a set photo and referring to Kilmer as "the Putz," reports EW. He went further in the caption, rejecting the idea that one shouldn't criticize the dead and claiming that if Kilmer behaved now as he did then, "he would have been cancelled in a blink," before calling him "the worst human being I've ever known."

Marcus' shot, which People notes has since been taken down, joins a long history of complaints about Kilmer's on-set behavior. Batman Forever director Joel Schumacher once labeled him "childish and impossible" and "psychologically disturbed," while The Island of Dr. Moreau director John Frankenheimer vowed never to work with him again. Kilmer pushed back in a 2003 Rolling Stone interview, saying those directors couldn't fault his work and arguing he'd made studios more than a billion dollars. In the 2021 documentary Val, he acknowledged he'd sometimes acted badly and oddly, but said he had no regrets and considered himself "blessed."