Off The Record
Val Kilmer, An Icon And A Legend In Hollywood Dies At 65
After a protracted health battle, Hollywood star Val Kilmer, who was best known for his iconic appearances in Top Gun, Batman, and The Doors, passed away at the age of 65.
He died of pneumonia in Los Angeles on Tuesday, according to his daughter Mercedes Kilmer, whom he had with his ex-wife Joanne Whalley.
After receiving a diagnosis of throat cancer in 2014, the screen icon had surgery, including a tracheotomy, which had a major effect on his speech. Later, it was determined that he was cancer-free.
Kilmer was well-known for playing Batman/Bruce Wayne in the 1995 Batman Forever and Iceman in the popular 1986 film Top Gun. He briefly returned to the screen in 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick, playing Iceman alongside Tom Cruise, despite having a permanently damaged voice. It was his last time on the big screen.
In the 1991 movie The Doors, the Los Angeles native also played the well-known role of artist Jim Morrison.
In addition to Mercedes, age 33, he has a 29-year-old son named Jack Kilmer. From 1988 until 1996, Kilmer was wed to their mother, Joanne, a fellow actress.
The New York Times confirmed his death Tuesday.
In addition to receiving chemotherapy and radiation therapy for his cancer, Kilmer also had a tracheostomy, which is a technique that makes an artificial hole in his neck so that he can breathe.
The latter caused irreversible harm to his vocal cords, which changed his speaking voice forever.
In 2020, Kilmer declared he had been cancer-free for four years.
Actor Josh Brolin, a friend of the deceased star, led the remembrances.
The star of No Country For Old Men posted a vintage image of the two actors beaming together before Kilmer’s emergency tracheotomy in 2014 following the discovery of throat cancer.
“See ya, pal,” Brolin captioned the photo affectionately. “I’m going to miss you.”
“There’s not a lot left of those,” he said, praising Kilmer as a “smart, challenging, brave, uber-creative firecracker.”
“I hope to see you up there in the heavens when I eventually get there,” Brolin continued. “Until then, amazing memories, lovely thoughts.”
Actor Josh Gad posted a picture of Kilmer during the glory days of Top Gun’s filming on Instagram.
“RIP Val Kilmer. Thank you for defining so many of the movies of my childhood. You truly were an icon,” he captioned the post.
Just ‘love you, Val’ was posted on X (previously Twitter) by comic actor and filmmaker Jorma Taccone, who co-stars with Andy Samberg and Akiva Schaffer in The Lonely Island.
Bill Simmons, a podcast host and sports expert, posted what appeared to be a polaroid of Kilmer dressed up on the set of Heat.
“Val Kilmer was unlike anyone else.” genuinely delighted in his task. “Rest in peace,” he wrote.
Kilmer talked openly about living with the effects of throat cancer, such as needing to use an electric gadget called a voice box on the artificial hole in his neck to speak, in the Val documentary on Amazon Prime.
“I obviously am sounding much worse than I feel. I can’t speak without plugging this hole [in his throat],” he said.
In order to help people with throat cancer communicate, voice box devices are often battery-operated devices that generate sound to create a voice.
Some of the additional difficulties were described by the actor, who also had to eat through a feeding tube.
“You have to make the choice to breathe or to eat. It’s an obstacle that is very present with whoever sees me,” he said.
The documentary’s voice-over narration was given by Val’s son, but Val wrote his own lines.
Kilmer has previously described how, until he coughed up “coagulated blood” one day and sought for an ambulance before fainting, he was ignorant that he had throat cancer.
Then, following an emergency tracheotomy for throat cancer, he awoke in a hospital in Santa Monica.
Speaking to the New York Times about denying he had throat cancer, he explained: “They said I was denying that I had cancer, and when they asked me, I didn’t have cancer. It was a bit like do you have a broken bone? And if you broke it in high school, you would say no.”
In an interview with Good Morning America in 2020, Kilmer said that he “healed very quickly” after being diagnosed with throat cancer.
“This is a tracheotomy,” he said while holding his hand to his throat, “to help me breathe because the glands in my throat swelled up as well.”
When asked what he misses the most about his voice, Kilmer told GMA, “That I had one! And that I didn’t laugh like a pirate.”
In 2019, Kilmer ceased going to red carpet events, but he continued to interact with fans on Instagram by posting his artwork and infrequent selfies.
And on February 23, 2025, fewer than two months before he passed away, Kilmer shared what would be one of his last postings on social media.
He posted eerie video of himself and musician David Choe sitting out in a cushioned lounge. The video was first shot in 2021.
With his trim figure, clean-shaven face, and slightly long hair, the celebrity appeared to be in good health.
Kilmer spoke briefly in the video before putting on a specially designed Batman mask that Choe had created for him.
It’s ‘been awhile’ since Kilmer relived his Batman golden days, he joked.
Kilmer put on the mask, looked directly into the camera, and then panned to a vibrant painting of Batman that Choe had probably created for him.
In addition to the film, Kilmer included images of Choe’s other Batman-themed artwork and snippets of the artist discussing his passion for the character.
Kilmer’s February 2023 image received almost 30,000 ‘likes’ from his 634,000 Instagram followers, but he didn’t caption it.
On March 22, Kilmer shared his last Instagram post.
One of his original paintings, which he had signed and put up for sale on his website, was photographed.
“It’s got that late-night glow,” he wrote of the artwork. “Cool tones with a low burn, like when the camp fire cools down but you’re still wide awake.”
Before his career was marred by a string of failures and several arguments with co-stars and directors, Kilmer was one of Hollywood’s most well-known leading men in the 1990s.
Kilmer developed a reputation for being erratic, passionate, meticulous, and occasionally conceited throughout the years.
“When certain people criticize 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.
“I believe I’m challenging, not demanding, and I make no apologies for that.”
Gladys Swanette and Eugene Dorris Kilmer welcomed Kilmer into the world on December 31, 1959, in Los Angeles. When he was eight years old in 1968, his parents were divorced. At the age of 15, his younger brother Wesley perished in a jacuzzi.
Kilmer, who went to Chatsworth High School with Kevin Spacey, went on to become the youngest member of the renowned Juilliard School’s Drama Group at the time.
Prior to making his screen debut in the silly comedy Real Genius (1985), he starred in the spy parody Top Secret! (1984).
Playing naval aviator Tom “Iceman” Kazansky in the 1986 blockbuster hit Top Gun, he shot to fame. Decades later, he re-starred with Cruise in the 2022 follow-up Top Gun: Maverick.
Kilmer was ecstatic about the chance to play Iceman again in Top Gun: Maverick.
In the original 1986 movie, the actor was well-known for portraying Tom Cruise’s cool, collected opponent, Maverick.
However, Cruise allegedly mobilized the troops to make sure his friend was included when the actor acknowledged in a 2013 interview with Larry King that he had not been asked about playing in a possible Top Gun sequel.
In an interview with People, producer Jerry Bruckheimer declared, “Tom said he wasn’t going to make the movie without him.”
As a result, Ice, who had been promoted to Admiral, was able to join in the fun after the final screenplay was approved.
“So the fact that he was able to do it and he worked with us on the script,” explained the producer, “to have him there and be a part of it was a really emotional day when we filmed him. Because you want to see those two on the screen again, Iceman and Maverick going at it. And that’s what movie making and audiences love.”
Both reviewers and admirers gave that specific component high honors.
‘Stoked’ his father was to be joining the cast, Jack, Val’s son, recalled.
“[My sister,] Mercedes, and I went down to San Diego to that big naval base for the shoot with Tom Cruise and everyone. And there were hundreds of extras of real pilots coming up to us and telling us that the first Top Gun inspired them to join the Navy and the Air Force.”
“It was one of the proudest moments of being American that you could think of really.”
Kilmer married his British co-star Joanne, with whom he had two daughters before divorcing her, and acted in the fantasy film Willow (1988) directed by Ron Howard.
One of his most difficult performances was playing Jim Morrison, the charismatic and ultimately doomed lead singer of the iconic rock band The Doors, in Oliver Stone’s 1991 film The Doors.
Kilmer created an eight-minute video of himself singing and resembling Morrison at different times in his life in an attempt to convince Stone to cast him. The movie uses Kilmer’s genuine singing voice.
The Doors marked the beginning of his most well-known years. He portrayed Doc Holliday, an Old West gunfighter, in the 1993 Western Tombstone.
In 1995, he had two financial successes: he co-starred with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in the crime drama Heat, and he played the Caped Crusader in Batman Forever, the third Batman film, replacing Michael Keaton.
Critics gave Batman Forever a mediocre review, and co-stars Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones overshadowed Kilmer. Kilmer left the upcoming Batman film.
Kilmer is ‘the most psychologically damaged human being I’ve ever worked with,’ according to director Joel Schumacher.
In his 2020 memoir, I’m Your Huckleberry, Kilmer disclosed that he had been unmarried since 2000.
“I haven’t had a girlfriend in 20 years. The truth is I am lonely part of every day,” he wrote.
“I’ve always found women infinitely more interesting than men. Perhaps that’s why we’ve always gotten along. We are big oafy elephants…and they are butterflies.”
Val claimed to have dated his Alexander-leading woman Angelina Jolie in 2004, but it appears that their relationships were not committed. In 2005, he was photographed kissing Winona Ryder.
Kilmer has dated some of the world’s most attractive ladies, such as Cindy Crawford and Daryl Hannah.
The actor from Jay and Silent Bob Reboot has particularly nice things to say about his ex-girlfriend Cher, who let him stay in her guest house in Malibu after he was given a throat cancer diagnosis in 2015.
“Once Cher works her way inside your head and heart, she never leaves. For her true friends, her steadfast love and loyalty never die,” Val wrote.
Kilmer’s closest run at a major award was a 2012 Grammy nomination for Best Spoken Word Album for The Mask of Zorro, although he never garnered an Oscar or Emmy nomination despite his illustrious career.
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