Revisiting Val Kilmer’s Soulful Santa Fe Home

“Val’s furniture had nothing to do with Santa Fe,” Kent explains, “so we decided to make the house more southwestern,” a feat they jump-started by eschewing slipcovers in favor of Native American textiles and laying down vintage Navajo rugs. Happily, Kilmer was no purist. “Val travels all over the world, so he let me use a mix of countries,” notes Kent, pointing to a Moroccan lamp and sconces as well as the actor’s haunting collection of art and objects from New Guinea that sit in corners or, like a fearsome-looking totem, lean casually against the living room wall. Near it, the kiva-style fireplace is laden with candles, Kilmer’s “favorite thing,” according to Kent, who has filled the rooms with Mexican church candles made especially for her shop. Even the antique antelope horn chandeliers dominating the living and dining rooms are lit only by candles.

Upstairs in the many-windowed master suite, a narrow Navajo rug from the 1930s, rare for its length, offsets the antique lace bedcovering on the sturdy mahogany four-poster. Across the room, a brown leather sofa is softened by a Portuguese wool throw. The ceilings in the bedroom, indeed throughout the house, are beamed, while the walls are peppered with pictures of Kilmer’s children.

The result is casual, unpretentious, unexpected, indeed ironic. There is the macho of a mounted antelope head, the tenderness of a stairwell laden with New Mexican heart rocks, the starkness of the collection of primitive tools covering a table in the library. Sofas and chairs are large and masculine—though the actor has considered banishing furniture in favor of gigantic pillows. “Val lives on the floor in his library, lying on his back with his feet on the desk,” says Kent. “He talks on the phone like that for hours, making his deals.”

“One of the most attractive things about living here is the city’s spirit. Indians traveled to this spot to exchange ideas, trade and celebrate life.”

If he opts for a chair, however, the library boasts two genuine beauties: a pair of French armchairs in weathered leather. “In the early 1980s I was living in New York and saw four leather chairs—two big, two small—in a shop on Madison Avenue,” says Kilmer. “I couldn’t afford them, but I kept going back to look, until I got so attached, I finally had to get the bigger ones.” He laughs. “I don’t remember what I sold, or what favors I did, but I bought them.

“Years later I walked into a house in Santa Fe, and there sat the two smaller chairs. Their owner, a photographer, had been living in New York at the same time I was and had had the same reaction to them. Finally, she’d bought the two small ones. The store owner told her, “Funny, there’s a guy doing the same thing as you.” That was in 1982—and these chairs ended up a half mile apart in Santa Fe.”

The actor stops, savoring the synchronicity that seems to fly through the air in Santa Fe. “One of the most attractive things about living here is the city’s spirit,” he muses. “Indian tribes, from the plains all the way to deepest Mexico, traveled to this spot to exchange ideas, trade and celebrate life. Since this was a gathering place, it always had a sensibility to tradition, a continuity and an acceptance of a different way of doing things.”