Val Kilmer, star of Top Gun and Batman Forever, dead at 65

Val Kilmer, the brooding, versatile actor who played fan favourite Iceman in Top Gun, donned a voluminous cape as 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 New York Times was the first to report his death on Tuesday.

The renowned actor 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 said toward the end of Val, the 2021 documentary on his career. And I am blessed." The lines in the film were delivered by his son Jack, who voiced the part of his father in the film because of his inability to speak.

Kilmer 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 leading man, starring alongside Kurt Russell and Bill Paxton in 1993's Tombstone, as Elvis Presley'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. 

"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. 

Known for intense preparation

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" and blasted The Doors' music 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 honour 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. 

But Phillip Noyce, who directed him in The Saint, told the Chicago Sun-Times in 1997 that "the real Val Kilmer is a lamb," while praising him for his work ethic.

Top Gun misgivings

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, his voice regenerated with the help of technology.

Kilmer suffered the slings of the critics in the 1990s, beginning with Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever with Nicole Kidman and opposite Chris O'Donnell's Robin. 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 Michael Keaton, who portrayed Bruce Wayne/Batman in two previous films.

Kilmer's next projects were the film version of the 1960s TV series The Saint 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 plagued by complications and interpersonal clashes.

"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." For the feature, director John Frankenheimer, who finished The Island of Dr. Moreau, said there were two things he would never do: "Climb Mount Everest and work with Val Kilmer again."

Range of portrayals

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; the meth-fuelled caper The Salton Sea in 2002 and as '70s porn star John Holmes in 2003's Wonderland.

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. 

"Val Kilmer was the most talented actor when in his High School, and that talent only grew greater throughout his life," director Francis Ford Coppola — who directed Kilmer in one of his last lead roles, 2011's Twixt — said on Instagram. "He was a wonderful person to work with and a joy to know — I will always remember him."

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 once told the New York Times. 

He gained notice on stage early in his career in the Broadway play, Slab Boys, alongside Kevin Bacon and Sean Penn. 

Kilmer is survived by his two children, Mercedes and Jack, from a marriage to actress Joanne Whalley, which ended in divorce in 1996.

"I have no regrets," Kilmer told the AP in 2021. "I've witness and experienced miracles."