The actor described himself in a documentary on his career as being ‘blessed’ and having ‘no regrets’.
US actor Val Kilmer, who starred in Hollywood blockbuster films such as Top Gun and Batman Forever, has died of pneumonia at the age of 65.
Kilmer died on Tuesday night in Los Angeles, his daughter Mercedes Kilmer said in an email to The Associated Press news agency, after having recovered from a throat cancer diagnosis in 2014 that required two tracheotomies.
Kilmer, the youngest actor ever accepted to the prestigious Juilliard School at the time he attended, started his career with the spy spoof Top Secret! in 1984, followed by the comedy Real Genius in 1985.
His movie career hit its zenith in the early 1990s as he made a name for himself starring alongside Kurt Russell and Bill Paxton in 1993’s Tombstone, as Elvis’s 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.
Kilmer was courted by director Tony Scott for Top Gun but initially baulked.
“I didn’t want the part. I didn’t care about the film. The story didn’t interest me,” he wrote in his memoir.
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He agreed to play one of his most iconic roles – hotshot pilot Tom “Iceman” Kazansky opposite Tom Cruise – after being promised that his role would improve from the initial script.
He would reprise the part in the film’s 2022 sequel, Top Gun: Maverick.
He also played Batman in Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever with Nicole Kidman and opposite Chris O’Donnell’s Robin.
In a 2021 documentary on his own career, Kilmer described barely being able to move when in the Batman suit.
“You also can’t hear anything and after a while people stop talking to you, it’s very isolating,” he said. “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 career took a downturn when he clashed with co-star Marlon Brando during the notoriously troubled production of The Island of Dr Moreau, which flopped in 1996.
Kilmer also starred in The Ghost and the Darkness (1996) with Michael Douglas, The Saint (1997) with Elisabeth Shue, At First Sight (1999) with Mira Sorvino, Red Planet (2000), The Salton Sea (2002), director Stone’s Alexander (2004) and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) with Robert Downey Jr.
Temperamental, intense
Over the years, Kilmer gained a reputation as temperamental, intense, perfectionistic and sometimes egotistical.
As part of his acting method, he 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.
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To play Morrison, he wore leather pants all the time, asked cast and crew to only refer to him as Jim Morrison and blasted The Doors for a year.
“When certain people criticise me for being demanding, I think that’s a cover for something they didn’t do well. I think they’re trying to protect themselves,” Kilmer told the Orange County Register newspaper in 2003.
He described himself in his documentary as being “blessed”.
“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 said.
