Val Kilmer easily turned in one of the best roles in his career as Doc Holliday in Tombstone, and the fact he didn’t receive an Oscar nomination is deeply frustrating. Released in 1993, Tombstone tells the story of Wyatt Earp and his brothers’ infamous gunfight at the O.K. Corral. One of two movies released around the same time about Wyatt Earp’s life, Tombstone remains the most popular of the pair, but critics mostly dismissed it that year, and it lived life as a mainstream blockbuster that became a cult classic.

Another part of the movie that deserved much more respect than it received when released in 1993 was Val Kilmer’s performance as Doc Holliday. Kilmer took the Doc Holliday character and made him the most memorable part of the film. He was sick and at death’s door throughout the entire movie. However, he used this trait to add so many great tics to his performance, and then he delivered the best quotes in Tombstone, proving he was not only the best character in the movie, but that he deserved awards recognition that never arrived.

Val Kilmer’s Performance Is What Elevates Tombstone Into Being An All-Time Great Western

Val Kilmer Stole Every Scene He Was In

Tombstone had several actors in it that movie fans recognize, even three decades later. On top of the Earp brothers, played by Kurt Russell, Sam Elliott, and Bill Paxton, everyone from the villains to the supporting actors were either big names in movies or TV, or they would become major names after the Western played in theaters.

The Tombstone cast included everyone from Powers Boothe and Charlton Heston to Michael Biehn, Thomas Haden Church, Dana Delany, Michael Rooker, Billy Bob Thornton, Billy Zane, and many more. However, even with all those big names, it was Kilmer who stole the show as Doc Holliday. He had the best lines in the movie, from “I’ll be your huckleberry” to “Why Johnny Ringo, you look like somebody just walked over your grave.“

Add in the fact he spent the entire movie looking like he was going to drop ᴅᴇᴀᴅ at any minute, and it proved that Kilmer brought 100 percent to the movie role. With all the talk about how difficult the Tombstone shoot was, that makes his amazing performance as Doc Holliday even more impressive.

Kilmer’s Doc Holliday Is More Memorable Today Than Most Oscar Nominees From That Year

Tommy Lee Jones Won For The Fugitive

Val Kilmer deserved a nomination, at the least, for his performance as Doc Holliday in Tombstone. There was a lot of compeтιтion that year, and at least two of the other nominees deserved their praise. Tommy Lee Jones won for his role as U.S. Marshal Sam Gerard in The Fugitive, beating out Ralph Fiennes, who delivered a spectacular performance in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. Both deserved their nominations and both could have won.

The other three nominees are all immensely talented actors, but Kilmer deserved the nomination over most of them. Leonardo DiCaprio picked up his first nomination at 19 for playing a teenager with an intellectual disability in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, which was an incredible performance by the young actor. The other two nominees included John Malkovich for In the Line of Fire and Peter Postlethwaite for In the Name of the Father. Once again, great acting turns, but ones that no one remembers today compared to Kilmer’s Tombstone performance.

Why Wasn’t Val Kilmer Oscar-Nominated For Tombstone?

Tombstone Wasn’t Respected By The Hollywood System

There is one big reason that Val Kilmer didn’t receive an Oscar nomination for his performance in Tombstone. Hollywood and the awards bodies didn’t take the movie seriously at all when it hit theaters. Much like Young Guns a few years before it, many critics viewed the movie as a popcorn Western movie. Since it wasn’t a serious Western, like the classics with John Wayne or Clint Eastwood, no one took it as more than just a Hollywood blockbuster production.

The reviews were solid, with a 76% fresh Rotten Tomatoes score, but even the positive reviews mentioned how this film had a great cast and a fun story, but “fun” is not usually what qualifies for Oscar nominations. Almost everyone who reviewed the movie praised Val Kilmer’s performance, so if anyone got an Oscar nomination, it would have been him. Sadly, the only awards recognition came at the MTV Movie + TV Awards, and Kilmer didn’t even win there.

The Oscars Loved A Western The Year Before Tombstone

Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven Won Best Picture

Another thing that hurt Tombstone was that the Oscars highly praised a Western movie the year before. For almost 20 years, the Western genre seemed ᴅᴇᴀᴅ. However, that all changed when Clint Eastwood directed and starred in the revisionist Western Unforgiven. However, this movie was extremely different from Tombstone. While Tombstone seemed to be a very fun action movie with outstanding performances, Unforgiven seemed like a throwback Western.

Things in Unforgiven were dark. Clint Eastwood and Kurt Russell both played Western archetypes who just wanted to retire and live their lives in peace. In both cases, they get pulled back in. While Russell, Kilmer, and company ended up in giant gunfights and delivered great quotes in Tombstone, Eastwood’s former outlaw sought vengeance, and his killing of the corrupt lawman, Little Bill Daggett, was devastatingly brutal.

Clint Eastwood won an Oscar for Best Director and Best Picture, while Gene Hackman won Best Supporting Actor for his role as Little Bill. Eastwood also received a nomination for Best Actor, and the movie won four total Oscars in nine nominations. Clearly, the Oscars found Unforgiven to be a “serious” movie and Tombstone to be a lesser Western.

Val Kilmer Deserved An Oscar Nomination At Some Point

Val Kilmer Could Have Won For The Doors

There is a big reason Val Kilmer never won an Oscar. Looking at his career, there was a very long period when Kilmer wasn’t getting any good roles. Kilmer developed a reputation as a very difficult actor to work with. This made many directors avoid casting him to keep from getting into these difficult situations.

However, there are several roles where Val Kilmer not only deserved to receive at least one Oscar nomination in his career, but he deserved to win it. The first came in 1991 when he starred in Oliver Stone’s biopic The Doors as Jim Morrison. The movie received mixed reviews for its inaccuracies about Morrison, but Kilmer received universal praise and really became Jim Morrison in the performance.

There is also the Val Kilmer role that Tom Hiddleston said was “the great cinema performance” in Heat. In this Michael Mann movie, Kilmer did the unthinkable. He stole the movie from out under Robert De Niro and Al Pacino’s noses. While all the talk went to Pacino and De Niro sharing a screen together, Kilmer was the best part of the incredible crime drama.

Val Kilmer never received an Oscar nomination in his career. He also never received a Golden Globes nomination, and he might be the most overlooked movie star of his generation for awards recognition. However, if any movie deserved to see Val Kilmer get his Oscar recognition, it was Tombstone and his amazing performance as Doc Holliday.