The Iceman cometh

If you're dubious of the arrival of yet another Hollywood star in the West End, Val Kilmer feels your pain. 'I'm a very tough critic of the theatre,' he says.

'There's so much out there that's accessible, even on your watch now, so much spectacular technology, and then you're asked to pay £40 to go and see something? And you've got to get dressed and shave and take her to a restaurant and try to park? Theatre has to be priceless. It has to be extraordinary.'

The 45-year-old Californian is over here to star in a stage adaptation of James M Cain's 1934 pulp classic The Postman Always Rings Twice.

It is, no question, his fame from films such as Batman Forever, The Saint and Wonderland that has put his name above the title. But Kilmer is a Julliard-trained stage actor.

After his success as Iceman in Top Gun, he went and played Hamlet. After playing Jim Morrison in The Doors, he went off-Broadway for 'Tis Pity She's A Whore.

But this is the first time he's acted on the London stage. 'I'd thought maybe I'd left it too long,' he says in a steady, affable drawl, sitting in a dishevelled dressing room in the bowels of the Playhouse Theatre. 'And now here I am with a story that's all about where I'm from.'

Kilmer plays Frank, a drifter who turns up one day at a diner outside LA and decides to stay the moment he sees the Greek owner's gorgeous wife, Cora. The consequences are carnal and catastrophic. He knows the setting well - 'my dad had a ranch ten miles from this place' - and offers a slew of ideas about Frank's background.

He is a famously - even notoriously - intense actor. Batman Forever director Joel Schumacher called him 'psychologically troubled.' The late John Frankenheimer said there were two things he would never do: 'climb Mount Everest or work with Val Kilmer again'.

'I've never seen anyone good at anything where it didn't cost them something,' Kilmer says slowly, by way of explanation. 'In this story, Frank and Cora both let each other down. There are times in my life that I've been looking at, times that were awful and embarrassing, some kind of failure like I'm describing in his life.'

Can he keep that up over a tenweek run? 'Oh, I don't think I'll have any trouble leaving Frank behind at the Playhouse,' he laughs. 'At the end of the evening, it's finished.'