Val Kilmer, 'Top Gun' and Batman star with an intense approach, dies at
65
[April 02, 2025]
By MARK KENNEDY and ANDREW DALTON
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. The Times was the first to report his death on
Tuesday.
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 1984’s 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 1993’s “Tombstone,” as Elvis’ ghost in “True Romance” and
as a bank-robbing demolition expert in Michael Mann’s 1995 film “Heat”
with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.
“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," director Michael Mann said in a statement
Tuesday night.
Actor Josh Brolin, a friend of Kilmer, was among others paying tribute.
“You were a smart, challenging, brave, uber-creative firecracker,”
Brolin wrote on Instagram. “There’s not a lot left of those.”
Kilmer — 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, “I’m Your Huckleberry.”
One of his more iconic roles — hotshot pilot Tom “Iceman” Kazansky
opposite Tom Cruise — almost didn’t happen. Kilmer was courted by
director Tony Scott for “Top Gun” but initially balked. “I didn’t want
the part. I didn’t care about the film. The story didn’t 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
film’s 2022 sequel, “Top Gun: Maverick.”
One career nadir was playing Batman in Joel Schumacher’s goofy, garish
“Batman Forever” with Nicole Kidman and opposite Chris O’Donnell‘s Robin
— before George Clooney took up the mantle for 1997’s “Batman & Robin”
and after Michael Keaton played the Dark Knight in 1989’s “Batman” and
1992’s “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.
“When you’re in it, you can barely move and people have to help you
stand up and sit down,” Kilmer said in “Val," in lines spoken by his son
Jack, who voiced the part of his father in the film because of his
inability to speak. “You also can’t hear anything and after a while
people stop talking to you, it’s very isolating. It was a struggle for
me to get a performance past the suit, and it was frustrating until I
realized that my role in the film was just to show up and stand where I
was told to."
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Val Kilmer poses for a portrait in New York, Tuesday, April 24,
2012. (AP Photo/Charles Sykes, File)
 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 decade’s most infamously
cursed productions.
David Gregory’s 2014 documentary “Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of
Richard Stanley’s 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: "'It’s a job now, Val. A lark.
We’ll get through it.’ I was as sad as I’ve 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 director's 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, ‘You’re
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 2003’s “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
that’s always so close to the surface, and how valuable his genius
is for us today.”
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 family’s
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. I’m 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
Coppola’s “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.
“I have no regrets,” Kilmer told the AP in 2021. “I’ve witness and
experienced miracles.”
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Kennedy reported from New York.
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