It may not be Christian, but with the Bible at one end and DreamWorks, run by Hollywood's holy triumvirate of Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg, at the other, The Prince Of Egypt is guaranteed to be this Christmas's biggest cinematic pull. From mass billboard and TV advertising to the movie's unashamed pitch at the Top 10 (Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston's When You Believe sung to the parting of the Red Sea) there's as much chance of avoiding Moses as Santa this month.
As if to reinforce its this-ain't-just-kids-stuff aura of professionalism, the cast of voices is as high-profile as any live-action movie. Unlike the recent Antz, where Woody Allen's animated hero remained resolutely Woody Allen with a few extra legs, the onscreen characters in this story of Moses saving the Children of Israel remain just that, even though they are played by actors whose voices are as well-known as their faces: Ralph Fiennes, Helen Mirren, Jeff Goldblum, Sandra Bullock, Michelle Pffeifer, Steve Martin and Patrick Stewart.
Heading the roll call of what is described "voice talent" is Val Kilmer as Moses. Compared with his glitzy co-stars, the name hardly conjures up an instant image. Yet DreamWorks knew what they were doing. Alone among the American actors in the cast, Kilmer is an actor first, rather than a star. His portrayal of Jim Morrison in The Doors in 1991 - the descent of a beautiful young man into a bloated alcoholic - was quite exceptional, wholly convincing and brave; ditto Elvis Presley in True Kid. Even his Batman was a triumph of acting over costume.
Few leading men of his generation are prepared to take on roles which require such risk-taking. Yet those are the very roles that Kilmer hankers after. Sadly, he says, such opportunities are all too rare. Of the hundreds of movies made in the last decade "only seven or eight movies show that kind of development of character. Three or four that Ralph's done are really great. He's got a fantastic group of stories already". Val Kilmer's admiration of Fiennes, his English co-star, who voices the pivotal role of Moses's foster brother and scourge of the Hebrews, Rameses, is generous and unfeigned. In a very un-film starry phrase, he tells me he thinks the world of Ralph. "He's so good. Easy to be jealous, he's handsome and he's very witty and so talented." Kilmer is intense rather than witty, but apart from slightly too showy teeth, he's handsome enough. But there's something disconnected about him. Throughout the interview he drinks organic apple-juice the colour of sand, beams at me through gold-rimmed glasses like a youthful history don, and runs fine fingers through flaxen hair that could do duty in a shampoo ad. So why does he think he has just missed the really big time. Lack of ambition, perhaps?
"I am not like some actors who use themselves very well - personality actors like Richard Gere, those actors who don't actually do anything except play themselves. I enjoy developing characters, in that way of meditating and creating the story through various and different ways which made the Prince of Egypt so unusual because it was just the voice. And that was hard."
Voice is only one element in an actor's arsenal - indeed, actors often describe building a role from the shoes up: the walk is as important as the talk. Then there are the outward manifestations of character: hairstyle, costume, age, not to mention body language. The cast of The Prince Of Egypt had nothing beyond its imaginations and, in Kilmer's case, a re-reading of the Book of Exodus. "It feels like you're in a vacuum," he explains. "Sort of weightless - there's no floor, there's no ceiling, there's no walls. You're literally making it up out of the air." Because - although drawn in the time-honoured, Disney-honoured, frame-by-frame way - the characters we see on the screen were not created until after the actors had done their stuff: indeed, the players were videoed while they were at the microphone, to allow animators to match facial movements and body language to the dialogue. "It's a really odd experience. The body that gets created isn't yours, it's sort of based on a rendering out of a version of you," Kilmer says.
To make life still more difficult, the actors delivered their lines largely on their own. Moses's relationship with his foster brother, Rameses, is the emotional engine of the movie, yet Fiennes and Kilmer never worked together and met for the first time last week at a press conference in London. Kilmer recorded his dialogue first, with a stand-in actor giving him the other lines.
"But then after Ralph recorded his part we'd go back and, based on his interpretation, or on an inspirational moment, we'd re-record." Not surprisingly, nuances brought to lines by individual actors could change the whole feeling of a scene. And it's in this area, Kilmer believes, that the quality of the actors comes across.
"The style is much more naturalistic than the high-volume, comedic-style, energy acting we're used to in animation. So it was really interesting to listen to the variety Ralph would bring to the role. You never knew how he would play it. He would say one thing completely dead-pan, or throw lines away; others were very high energy and so dynamic that you completely change your idea." Then, when Fiennes heard Kilmer's re-done lines, he too would re-record, like vocal version of table tennis.
"In a very odd way we were actually working together: it was a very slow-motion process because that's how the story gets made up. Like a mosaic, or an impressionist painting, where it doesn't really make much sense up close, but give it some distance - when the animation starts getting done - and suddenly it's there." Kilmer belongs to the same generation as Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, yet in spite of having regularly proved a more resourceful actor than either, he has never really hit their heights. One reason, I suggest, is that earlier in his career, when he was married to Joanne Whalley, he turned down films that became major critical and box office successes, usually because they did not dovetail into his wife's schedule.
"Many jobs I knew would have been a pretty surefire way to go about making a lot of money, being recognised and gaining power in the industry," he says. Jobs he passed up on include Dune, Blue Velvet, Flatliners, Backdraft, Point break, In the Line of Fire and Indecent Proposal. Yet he has no regrets about having put so much into his private life. "If it hadn't been that marriage, it would have been another way of living that would have been grounding and fortifying."
But there was one decision, before his marriage, which was, he says, highly significant. "I turned down a role in The Outsiders, because I was doing Shakespeare at the time and I thought it was right to stay with the play. I don't think I would have made the same choice now. Because great careers came out of that. Tom Cruise and a whole bunch of actors." Another film he would like to have done, but was not in fact offered ("I just didn't get hired") was Philadelphia. He believes today's megastars - Tom Hanks included - have all come up through television. "Theatre just doesn't carry any weight. Hollywood would rather pay lip-service than have anything to do with acting." Even though it's six years since he last performed on stage, theatre is still his spiritual home: "It's a more satisfying experience - the lifestyle as well. Movies are cut off, you really have to work at having a life. You get up before the sun gets up and you get home after it's gone down. I mean I filmed The Saint in London and you had to work to be involved with London, to go out, because Saturday night comes around and you're tired.
"Whereas in the theatre, although it takes so much physical energy and you have to stay in shape like an athlete, you can be involved with something in the day-time in relation to your life. I find it a much more satisfying lifestyle." Kilmer made his first movie, the comedy Top Secret, 15 years ago. "In that time some of my contemporaries have already made 40 movies to my 15. I don't know how they did it and survived. Because it's such a pounding on your psyche. But then also they do different kinds of stories."
It's only with his most recent movie, At First Sight with Mira Sorvino, that he has been just "normal" - "where I went to work every day and it wasn't something supercharged to get ready for in some fashion, physical or otherwise. It seems all the movies I have done until now are taxing in some way."
Now, however, the two strands of his career are about to blend into one: the offer to play Dracula on Broadway. He's thinking about it.
"It would be wonderful to get some real juice again on the New York stage," he beams, as he downs the last of his own organic tipple.
The Prince of Egypt is on general release