Val Kilmer, Top Gun and Batman star with an intense approach, dies at 65
Val Kilmer arrives at the 54th annual GRAMMY Awards, Feb. 12, 2012, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)2025-04-02T04:56:01Z LOS ANGELES (AP) Val Kilmer, the brooding, versatile actor who played fan favorite Iceman in Top Gun, donned a voluminous cape as Batman in Batman Forever and portrayed Jim Morrison in The Doors, has died. He was 65. Kilmer died Tuesday night in Los Angeles, surrounded by family and friends, his daughter, Mercedes Kilmer, said in an email to The Associated Press. Val Kilmer died from pneumonia. He had recovered after a 2014 throat cancer diagnosis that required two tracheotomies. I have behaved poorly. I have behaved bravely. I have behaved bizarrely to some. I deny none of this and have no regrets because I have lost and found parts of myself that I never knew existed, he says toward the end of Val, the 2021 documentary on his career. And I am blessed.Kilmer, the youngest actor ever accepted to the prestigious Juilliard School at the time he attended, experienced the ups and downs of fame more dramatically than most. His break came in 1984s spy spoof Top Secret! followed by the comedy Real Genius in 1985. Kilmer would later show his comedy chops again in films including MacGruber and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. His movie career hit its zenith in the early 1990s as he made a name for himself as a dashing leading man, starring alongside Kurt Russell and Bill Paxton in 1993s Tombstone, as Elvis ghost in True Romance and as a bank-robbing demolition expert in Michael Manns 1995 film Heat with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. The actor who took part in the Method branch of Suzuki arts training threw himself into parts. When he played Doc Holliday in Tombstone, he filled his bed with ice for the final scene to mimic the feeling of dying from tuberculosis. To play Morrison, he wore leather pants all the time, asked castmates and crew to only refer to him as Jim Morrison and blasted The Doors for a year. That intensity also gave Kilmer a reputation that he was difficult to work with, something he grudgingly agreed with later in life, but always defending himself by emphasizing art over commerce. In an unflinching attempt to empower directors, actors and other collaborators to honor the truth and essence of each project, an attempt to breathe Suzukian life into a myriad of Hollywood moments, I had been deemed difficult and alienated the head of every major studio, he wrote in his memoir, Im Your Huckleberry.One of his more iconic roles hotshot pilot Tom Iceman Kazansky opposite Tom Cruise almost didnt happen. Kilmer was courted by director Tony Scott for Top Gun but initially balked. I didnt want the part. I didnt care about the film. The story didnt interest me, he wrote in his memoir. He agreed after being promised that his role would improve from the initial script. He would reprise the role in the films 2022 sequel, Top Gun: Maverick.One career nadir was playing Batman in Joel Schumachers goofy, garish Batman Forever with Nicole Kidman and opposite Chris ODonnells Robin before George Clooney took up the mantle for 1997s Batman & Robin and after Michael Keaton played the Dark Knight in 1989s Batman and 1992s Batman Returns. Janet Maslin in The New York Times said Kilmer was hamstrung by the straight-man aspects of the role, while Roger Ebert deadpanned that he was a completely acceptable substitute for Keaton. Kilmer, who was one and done as Batman, blamed much of his performance on the suit. The Times was the first to report his death on Tuesday. When youre in it, you can barely move and people have to help you stand up and sit down, Kilmer said in Val. You also cant hear anything and after a while people stop talking to you, its very isolating. It was a struggle for me to get a performance past the suit, and it was frustrating until I realised that my role in the film was just to show up and stand where I was told to.His next projects were the film version of the 1960s TV series The Saint fussily putting on wigs, accents and glasses and The Island of Dr. Moreau with Marlon Brando, which became one of the decades most infamously cursed productions. David Gregorys 2014 documentary Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanleys Island of Dr. Moreau, described a cursed set that included a hurricane, Kilmer bullying director Richard Stanley, the firing of Stanley via fax (who sneaked back on set as an extra with a mask on) and extensive rewrites by Kilmer and Brando. The older actor told the younger at one point: Its a job now, Val. A lark. Well get through it. I was as sad as Ive ever been on a set, Kilmer wrote in his memoir. In 1996, Entertainment Weekly ran a cover story about Kilmer titled The Man Hollywood Loves to Hate. The directors Schumacher and John Frankenheimer, who finished The Island of Dr. Moreau, said he was difficult. Frankenheimer said there were two things he would never do: Climb Mount Everest and work with Val Kilmer again. Other artists came to his defense, like D. J. Caruso, who directed Kilmer in The Salton Sea and said the actor simply liked to talk out scenes and enjoyed having a directors attention.Val needs to immerse himself in a character. I think what happened with directors like Frankenheimer and Schumacher is that Val would ask a lot of questions, and a guy like Schumacher would say, Youre Batman! Just go do it, Caruso told The New York Times in 2002.After The Island of Dr. Moreau, the movies were smaller, like David Mamet human-trafficking thriller Spartan"; Joe the King in 1999, in which he played a paunchy, abusive alcoholic; and playing the doomed 70s porn star John Holmes in 2003s Wonderland. He also threw himself into his one-man stage show Citizen Twain, in which he played Mark Twain.I enjoy the depth and soul the piece has that Twain had for his fellow man and America, he told Variety in 2018. And the comedy thats always so close to the surface, and how valuable his genius is for us today. Still, we battle racism and greed. The same country, its greatness and its tragedy.Kilmer spent his formative years in the Chatsworth neighborhood of Los Angeles. He attended Chatsworth High School alongside future Oscar winner Kevin Spacey and future Emmy winner Mare Winningham. At 17, he was the youngest drama student ever admitted at the Juilliard School in 1981.Shortly after he left for Juilliard, his younger brother, 15-year-old Wesley, suffered an epileptic seizure in the familys Jacuzzi and died on the way to the hospital. Wesley was an aspiring filmmaker when he died. I miss him and miss his things. I have his art up. I like to think about what he would have created. Im still inspired by him, Kilmer told the Times.While still at Juilliard, Kilmer co-wrote and appeared in the play How It All Began and later turned down a role in Francis Ford Coppolas The Outsiders for the Broadway play, Slab Boys, alongside Kevin Bacon and Sean Penn.Kilmer published two books of poetry (including My Edens After Burns) and was nominated for a Grammy in 2012 for spoken word album for The Mark of Zorro. He was also a visual artist and a lifelong Christian Scientist.He dated Cher, married and divorced actor Joanne Whalley. He is survived by their two children, Mercedes and Jack. ____Kennedy reported from New York. MARK KENNEDY Kennedy is a theater, TV, music, food and obit writer and editor for The Associated Press, as well as a critic for theater, movies and music. He is based in New York City. twitter mailto ANDREW DALTON Dalton covers entertainment for The Associated Press, with an emphasis on crime, courts and obituaries. He has worked for the AP for 20 years and is based in Los Angeles. mailto RSShttps://feedx.net https://feedx.site
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