American actor Val Kilmer, who starred in films such as Top Gun, The Doors, Tombstone and Batman Forever while earning a reputation as a Hollywood bad boy for his intensity and temperament, has died at age 65.
The cause of death was pneumonia, the New York Times reported, citing his daughter Mercedes Kilmer. The actor had lived with poor health for years due to throat cancer.
The California-born, Juilliard-trained actor was, during the height of his career, one of Hollywood’s most prominent leading men. He made his film debut in the 1984 spy spoof Top Secret! which won him legions of fans, and soared to fame as Tom Cruise’s rival in the smash 1986 hit Top Gun, playing naval aviator Tom “Iceman” Kazansky.
Kilmer played the role again alongside Cruise in the successful 2022 sequel Top Gun: Maverick, though he could barely speak.
Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer and underwent radiation and chemotherapy treatments, as well as a tracheostomy that permanently damaged his voice. He turned to making art.
“It isn’t easy to talk and be understood,” Kilmer wrote on his website in 2022. “I am improving all the time, but am not able to be out in the world the same way I had become accustomed.”
Cruise during an interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in 2023 fondly recalled working again with Kilmer on the Top Gun sequel.
“I was crying. I got emotional. He’s such a brilliant actor, and I love his work,” Cruise said.
One of Kilmer’s most challenging roles came in director Oliver Stone’s The Doors (1991) in which he played Jim Morrison, the charismatic and ultimately doomed lead singer of the rock band. He sang The Doors’ hits himself in the film.
That role ushered in the highest-profile years of his career. In the 1993 Western Tombstone, he played Old West gunfighter Doc Holliday. He had two commercial successes in 1995, co-starring with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in the crime drama Heat.
Michael Mann, who directed Kilmer in Heat, wrote on Instagram, “I always marvelled at the range, the brilliant variability within the powerful current of Val’s possessing and expressing character. After so many years of Val battling disease and maintaining his spirit, this is tremendously sad news.”
Born in Los Angeles on December 31, 1959, Kilmer began acting in high school and became the youngest student accepted into the drama division of the famed Juilliard School in New York.
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