US actor Val Kilmer, known for iconic roles in Hollywood blockbusters like Top Gun and Batman Forever, has died of pneumonia at age 65.
His daughter Mercedes Kilmer confirmed he passed away Tuesday night in Los Angeles. Kilmer had previously recovered from a throat cancer diagnosis in 2014 that required two tracheotomies.
As the youngest actor ever accepted to the prestigious Juilliard School at the time, Kilmer began his film career with the spy spoof Top Secret! in 1984 and comedy Real Genius in 1985.
His career peaked in the early 1990s with notable performances alongside Kurt Russell and Bill Paxton in Tombstone (1993), as Elvis’s ghost in True Romance, and as a bank-robbing demolition expert in Michael Mann’s Heat (1995) with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.
Though initially reluctant to join Top Gun, Kilmer eventually agreed to play hotshot pilot Tom “Iceman” Kazansky opposite Tom Cruise after being promised script improvements. He later reprised this role in the 2022 sequel, Top Gun: Maverick.
Kilmer also portrayed Batman in Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever with Nicole Kidman and Chris O’Donnell. In a 2021 documentary about his career, he described the challenges of performing in the Batman suit: “You 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.”
His career faced setbacks following clashes with Marlon Brando during the troubled production of The Island of Dr Moreau, which flopped in 1996.
Other notable films included The Ghost and the Darkness (1996) with Michael Douglas, The Saint (1997), At First Sight (1999), Red Planet (2000), The Salton Sea (2002), Alexander (2004), and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) with Robert Downey Jr.
Throughout his career, Kilmer developed a reputation for being temperamental, intense, perfectionistic and sometimes egotistical. His method acting approach led him to extreme measures for authenticity โ sleeping on ice to simulate dying from tuberculosis for his Tombstone role and wearing leather pants constantly while blasting The Doors music for a year to prepare for playing Jim Morrison.
“When certain people criticise me for being demanding, I think that’s a cover for something they didn’t do well,” Kilmer told the Orange County Register in 2003.
In his documentary, Kilmer reflected on his life: “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.”
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