There is a crashing of crockery somewhere out in the hallway. Val Kilmer pauses, halfway through a handful of M&Ms, and raises an eyebrow. "Robert Downey Jr," he drawls. "Drunk again." Once, Val Kilmer had a face hewn into staggering Mount Rushmorean angles. Today, in a duskily-lit suite at the Dorchester hotel in London, the sharp cheekbones appear to have melted into something altogether waxier. His shirt and his socks are a corresponding shade of cerise, and sprawled across a sofa, shovelling his way through the contents of the mini-bar, he exudes a certain lazy, reptilian charm.
This is how we remember Kilmer: Top Gun, Batman Forever, The Doors. He was the cruelly gorgeous movie star for whom women swooned and to whom the press swiftly took a bristling dislike. Directors sniped about his attitude, and for a while it seemed his box office magnetism had weakened, overtaken by a new raft of devilish young actorly studs. After all, what roles remain for a pretty boy gone to seed?
Kilmer could, quite reasonably, have drifted into obscurity and second-rate FBI movies. Instead, he is now set to return in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, an irreverent, intelligent and hilarious offering from director Shane Black, which unites him with a far greater Hollywood casualty in Robert Downey Jr. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang is that rare dish: a gay detective story. Kilmer plays Gay Perry (the clue is in the name), a Hollywood private eye, in a tale that embraces trash fiction, nods to the mores of Tinseltown and its infatuation with youth, and sees Kilmer snog Downey Jr.
Kilmer was throwing a party for director Jim Sheridan when Downey rocked up. "I'd never spent any time with him," Kilmer's voice is coarse, like velvet stroked the wrong way. "But he vividly described the first time we met. It was about 1996. At some awards ceremony. And I thought well that's quite a talent, because he was clearly high when we first met. And he's so happy now that he's healthy, and you can just feel his sense of joy about everything. Like, 'Ooh! An M&M!'" Kilmer holds up a bright green M&M, and gazes at it with awe. "He's just happy now. And he is infectious."
A week after the party, Kilmer received the script for Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. Downey was already cast. "Before I'd even finished it I called up and said 'Love to be in it!'" A gay detective might seem a curious role for one of Hollywood's fully-fledged heartthrobs. "He wasn't gay when I read it," Kilmer says drily. "I insisted. I said Shane, we gotta get a little colour in here. We gotta juice it up a little. I think I should be gay. I think I should kiss Robert Downey in the middle of the film. Maybe even earlier. Several times."
"Some people," he adds with a delectable half-smirk, "have observed that maybe this wasn't my first gay role. Maybe that was Top Gun."
So far, the reception has been stupendous. "The Cannes film festival was shocking. The ovation was so long. At one point I honestly thought they were applauding Robert for being alive. You know the French preoccupation with Jerry Lewis? It was like that - just oddly long. But then it sort of makes sense because it's being irreverent toward Hollywood and Los Angeles and American culture, if you could call it that." In fact the most shocking thing about Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang is not so much Downey Jr's resurrection as the fact that it might persuade the general public that Kilmer has a sense of humour. "I'd been looking to do a comedy for years," he says through a mouthful of Pringles. "But it's one of these strange Hollywood rules: you can't do a comedy unless you've just done one. And there's a four-year expiration date on genres. Unless a western's made money - doesn't matter who made the money, doesn't matter what the subject is - if the last one didn't make any money, you can't make another one for a four-year period. Westerns more than any genre. There were probably more bad westerns being made when the best ones were being made, because they were making more westerns. I'm sure there'll be a lot of pirate movies now that Pirates of the Caribbean was so great, and Master and Commander. We'll be fooled again. I hope," he concludes with a smirk. "There'll be a lot of gay detective movies now."
This is how Kilmer's conversation tends to travel - in long, slow, rangey strides. At times you think perhaps the sentence may have petered out mid-step, and then only the furious chomping of M&Ms serves to remind you there is still a pulse. But suddenly Kilmer will return: making a swift dart for the punchline. You can't help but wonder whether his time spent on the London stage, playing Frank in The Postman Always Rings Twice, might have rubbed off a little on his delivery; Kilmer, known for his dedication to his craft, worked long and hard to perfect the accent of a California drifter for the production.
Kilmer says he relished his return to the stage, and to acting in London theatre, which he first saw when he was 14. "The experience [of theatre] is unlike film, it is exactly the experience of the doing of it. Film is all preparation for a really alien experience, with all the machines and the contraptions. It's like the machine in the original Frankenstein: there's a whole lot of stuff being dialled and turned and then you get taken up into the sky and hopefully the lightning will hit. It's a really weird thing." The production was critically well-received, but Kilmer claims not to have registered press reactions. "I didn't read the reviews because I don't," he says haughtily. "The good reviews that people have told me about through the years haven't really helped me do my job. So it's kind of like, if your hair turns out right you want to go out, you don't just want to stay in and look in the mirror. That's kind of what reading a review is like to me; it's like revelling in something that's just one night."
Kilmer's rather strained relationship with the press is well-documented. During his period in The Postman Always Rings Twice, he garnered more column-inches in gossip pages than reviews: snide comments, sharp digs in the actor's ribs. "I have a couple of guys [journalists] who seem to remain silly in that way," he says. "But ... I don't know. It's too bad." A cloud falls across the room, and suddenly Kilmer sounds cold and hard. "They should get over it." he says. Another mouthful of Pringles. "It's so incidental that I don't even want to talk about it. With legitimate journalists I've always had a great time - I've never gone out of my way to court the press. That's probably cost me some money, but I've always had the respect of my peers. I feel I have a very charmed life. I love that Bob Dylan asked me to be in the first movie he wrote." Kilmer is evidently very excited about Dylan. "I've known him for over 10 years, and I don't get nervous round that many people but he's someone I'm real concerned about. Well, I might get nervous about wearing these pink socks if Bob was coming by."
We smile down at his socks. What would he wear if Bob were dropping by? "I dunno!" he grins. "But I mean I'm a fan! I want him to like me! So I'd probably think, what would Bob like me to wear? But I mentioned him as a fine example of someone who's taken a lot of flak through the years." Kilmer has the air of one who knows he is back on the up. He'll be taking a little time out, at his ranch in New Mexico, spending some time with his two children by his ex-wife actress Joanne Whalley. Reading, perhaps - he spends a good 10 minutes discussing Anthony Burgess' A Dead Man in Deptford. And of course, sniffing out his next project. "I've been looking hard for something to do with Robert," he says. He clearly loves Downey Jnr. "Actually ..." he says, hunting around for a pen and a scrap of paper, "I must write a note. What's the name of ... Who did The Beach? Who's the Trainspotting movie? And he did The Beach with Leonardo ... Danny Boyle!" he declares. "You lose!" He writes "Danny Boyle" on a piece of paper and tucks it in his pocket. "There's a train robbery buddy movie - that sounds gross doesn't it - a buddy movie? But it didn't get made so I want to check it out for me and Robert. Robert and I could do it! It's gratifying to hear people talking about wanting to see us do those characters more. Be like a sequel, you know?"
And would he be reprising the gay role, I wonder? "I certainly would! I don't know how I'd feel about having an actual relationship - separate from Robert. I think it's got to be Robert or no one. It's gonna be in my contract." Damn, I say, that kiss must have been pretty good. "You know, the only other guy I've kissed was Colin Farrell, and Robert was ... better. Colin's sloppy. Well no, not sloppy - but he's not a giver." Did he slip in the tongue? "Little bit," Kilmer laughs. "He really did. And there was some groping too. He looks like a groper, doesn't he?"
· Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang is out today Nov 11