Val Kilmer, the actor best known for his roles in Top Gun, Batman Forever and The Doors, has died at the age of 65.
His daughter Mercedes told the New York Times that the cause of death was pneumonia. Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014 and later recovered, after treatment with chemotherapy and trachea surgery that had reduced his ability to speak and breathe.
Kilmer died on Tuesday night in Los Angeles, surrounded by family and friends, Mercedes confirmed in an email to the Associated Press.
Born in Los Angeles in 1959, Kilmer was one of the youngest students ever admitted to the acting programme at the Juilliard School, aged 17. He started out as a stage actor and rose to prominence in the 1980s with his roles in comedies Top Secret! and Real Genius, before landing a role as Iceman in the 1986 box office smash Top Gun.
With his star rising, he took the lead role in Ron Howard and George Lucas’s 1988 fantasy epic Willow, where he met his future wife – his co-star, Joanne Whalley, with whom he would have two children.
Oliver Stone cast him as Jim Morrison in his biopic The Doors, and Kilmer also landed roles as Elvis Presley in True Romance and Doc Holliday in the western Tombstone. It was this performance that landed Kilmer the biggest role of his career, that of Bruce Wayne/Batman in Batman Forever. The film received mixed reviews but was a box office hit, and Kilmer became a huge star.
He did not return as the caped crusader for the next film in the series, Batman and Robin, and instead took roles as Simon Templar in a reboot of The Saint and opposite Marlon Brando in the poorly received The Island of Dr Moreau.
After another box office disaster in 2000, Red Planet, Kilmer took roles in smaller films with a lower profile. In 2005 he was cast opposite Robert Downey Jr in Shane Black’s directorial debut, the crime comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang; in 2012 he starred in a one-man show Citizen Twain, in which he played the writer Mark Twain; and in 2017 he appeared briefly in Terrence Malick’s music-industry drama Song to Song. He returned to the Iceman role in 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick, in which his character has become the commander of the US Pacific fleet.
On Wednesday, actor Josh Brolin paid tribute to Kilmer. “See ya, pal,” he wrote on Instagram. “I’m going to miss you. You were a smart, challenging, brave, uber-creative firecracker. There’s not a lot left of those. I hope to see you up there in the heavens when I eventually get there.”
Film-maker Michael Mann, who directed Kilmer in Heat, told the Hollywood Reporter: “While working with Val on Heat I always marvelled at the range, the brilliant variability within the powerful current of Val’s possessing and expressing character. After so many years of Val battling disease and maintaining his spirit, this is tremendously sad news.”
Kilmer is survived by his two children with Whalley, Mercedes and Jack.
