The legendary Val Kilmer was the best part of Tombstone, and he’s the reason it’s a must-watch Western classic instead of just a good one. After Val Kilmer’s tragic death on April 1, 2025, many fans of the beloved actor have revisited his biggest roles. Revisiting Kilmer’s role as Doc Holliday in Tombstone reveals that he wasn’t just the best part of Kurt Russell’s 1993 Western, he was the reason we still talk about it 32 years later. In fact, without Val Kilmer, Tombstone would have gone down as a great Western, but not as a legendary one.
Nowadays, Tombstone is largely considered one of the best Western movies ever made. It has it all: soaring and beautiful Western vistas, a laser-focused plot about the fight between order and chaos, and more than enough gunfights to go around. Even though Tombstone hit pretty much every beat of a great Western, it would be a shadow of the classic it is today without Val Kilmer. His portrayal of Doc Holliday is easily one of the best performances in Western history, and it’s going to be remembered for a very long time.
Val Kilmer Gives By Far The Greatest Performance in Tombstone
Kilmer Outperformed The Likes Of Kurt Russell, Bill Paxton, & Powers Boothe
Simply put, Val Kilmer is the best actor who gives the best performance in all Tombstone. That’s not a slight against the rest of Tombstone‘s all-star cast: it’s wildly high praise for Kilmer. I think Kurt Russell’s performance as Wyatt Earp is severely underrated, Sam Elliott and Bill Paxton are perfect complements as the Earp brothers, Dana Delany is a wonderful romantic lead, and Powers Boothe and Michael Biehn are deliciously devilish. Even though they and the rest of the movie’s cast were at the top of their game, none of them truly came close to Val Kilmer.
What really cements Val Kilmer as the best performer in Tombstone is the sheer range of his acting in the Western. Most of the other actors in Tombstone were largely playing pretty standard characters. Curly Bill and Johnny Ringo were dastardly bandits, Morgan and Virgil were goodhearted lawmen, and Josephine was a woman in love with the wrong man. Wyatt was a bit more varied, but Russell played him in a very grounded and subtle way that didn’t highlight his talents. Doc Holliday, on the other hand, was at times ferocious, completely laid back, funny, tragic, and a thousand other things, and Kilmer nailed every beat.
Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday Has Tombstone’s Best Quotes & Moments
Tombstone Wouldn’t Be Nearly As Memorable Without Kilmer’s Doc Holliday
Another major piece of proof that shows why Val Kilmer was the best actor in a sea of talent is the number of iconic moments and quotes he was responsible for. Most of Tombstone‘s best scenes are Doc Holliday’s, and most of the movie’s best quotes are just a camouflaged list of Doc Holliday’s best quotes. Wyatt and Johnny had a few great moments, but the vast majority of Tombstone‘s coolest and most memorable moments belong to Doc. Even after three decades, lines like “I’m your huckleberry” or “You’re a daisy if you do,” prove Doc’s – and Kilmer’s – staying power.
If another actor had said “I’m your huckleberry,” it would have been a forgettable moment. Kilmer turned it into an icon of the film.
It’s also worth noting that many of Doc Holliday’s best scenes wouldn’t have been nearly as good with anyone else in the role. No one but Val Kilmer could dance along the edge of madness as gracefully he did, and no one could have stolen Tombstone away from such an A-list cast like him. If another actor had said “I’m your huckleberry,” it would have been a forgettable moment. Kilmer turned it into an icon of the film. Just look at Dennis Quaid playing the same role in Wyatt Earp: he gave a good performance, but no one thinks of Quaid when they think of Doc Holliday.
Val Kilmer In Tombstone Is Up There With All-Time Great Western Performances
Kilmer Deserves A Spot Among Eastwood, Wayne, Bronson, & The Other Western Legends
Val Kilmer didn’t do many Westerns in the course of his career, but his performance as Doc Holliday was so good that he still deserves to be considered a legend of the genre. There are plenty of icons of the Western: Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, Lee Van Cleef, and Charles Bronson are just a few of the more notable ones. They played cowboys for most of their careers, and even though Kilmer only did a handful of Westerns, his name still deserves to be up there with the best of them. He may not have had the longest career in Westerns, but he certainly had one of the best.
Kilmer deserves to be considered a Western legend not just for his acting, but also for the character he played. Doc Holliday was a real person who was notorious long before Tombstone, but Val Kilmer turned him into a modern-day legend. Doc is just as classic of a Western gunslinger as Clint Eastwood’s Man with no Name or John Wayne’s Rooster Cogburn. Kilmer even made Doc into one of the best gunslingers in Western history as a side character in Tombstone: the movie is about Wyatt Earp, yet Kilmer’s Doc steals the show.
Val Kilmer Should’ve Won An Oscar For His Tombstone Role
Kilmer Deserved At Least A Nomination For Best Supporting Actor In 1994
It’s fairly clear that Val Kilmer was instrumental in turning Tombstone into the classic film it is, which only makes the fact that he was snubbed at awards season more glaring. At the 1994 Academy Awards, Kilmer wasn’t even nominated for Best Supporting Actor, but he deserved the Oscar. I still don’t understand how the Academy could look at Kilmer’s performance and see how it transformed Tombstone from a good Western into a modern masterpiece and not think he deserved recognition. What is the point of recognizing actors if the Academy skipped over the man who almost single-handedly revived a genre that had been unpopular for 20 years?
At the very least, Val Kilmer deserved an Oscar nomination for Tombstone. At the 1994 Oscars, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ralph Fiennes, John Malkovich, and Pete Postlethwait were all nominated for Best Supporting Actor, and Tommy Lee Jones won for The Fugitive. Kilmer’s performance was better than at least one of the nominees, and it’s a shame that he never got the official recognition he deserved. Luckily, Val Kilmer’s fans remembered how amazing his performance was, and Tombstone will always stand as proof of his acting abilities.
