LOS ANGELES (AP) — Val Kilmer, the versatile and enigmatic actor who played the beloved Iceman in “Top Gun,” donned a billowing cape as Batman in “Batman Forever” and embodied Jim Morrison in “The Doors,” has died at age 65.
Kilmer died Tuesday night in Los Angeles, surrounded by family and friends, his daughter Mercedes Kilmer confirmed in an email to The Associated Press.
Val Kilmer died of pneumonia. He had recovered after a throat cancer diagnosis in 2014 that required two tracheotomies.
“I have behaved badly. I have behaved bravely. I have behaved strangely for some. I do not deny any of this and I have no regrets because I have lost and found parts of myself that I never knew existed,” he says toward the end of “Val,” the 2021 documentary about his career. “And I am blessed.”
Kilmer, who was once the youngest actor admitted to the prestigious Juilliard School of the Arts, rode the highs and lows of fame with dramatic flair. His big break came with the 1984 spy spoof “Top Secret!,” followed by the 1985 comedy “Real Genius.” Kilmer would later show his comedic timing again in films like “MacGruber” and “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.”
His film career peaked in the early 1990s as a leading man, starring alongside Kurt Russell and Bill Paxton in “Tombstone” (1993), as Elvis’s ghost in “True Romance,” and as a demolition- and heist-expert in Michael Mann’s “Heat” (1995) opposite Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.
The actor—who pursued the Suzuki method of acting training—gave himself entirely to his roles. When he portrayed Doc Holliday in “Tombstone,” he filled his bed with ice to mimic the final, tuberculosis-stricken moment. To play Morrison, he wore leather pants constantly, asked castmates and crew to refer to him only as Jim Morrison, and cultured himself by listening to The Doors for an entire year.
That intensity also earned Kilmer a reputation for being difficult to work with, something he reluctantly acknowledged later in life, though he maintained that the craft should take precedence over other concerns.
“In an unwavering effort to empower directors, actors and other collaborators to honor the truth and the essence of each project, an attempt to infuse Suzuki’s life into a mosaic of Hollywood moments, I was labeled difficult and alienated the bosses at all the major studios,” he wrote in his memoir, “I’m Your Huckleberry.”
One of his most iconic roles—the elite pilot Tom “Iceman” Kazansky opposite Tom Cruise—almost didn’t happen. Kilmer was courted by director Tony Scott for “Top Gun” but initially resisted. “I didn’t want the part. I didn’t care about the movie. The story didn’t interest me,” he wrote in his memoir. He agreed to take the role after being promised his part would improve relative to the script. He would later reprise the role in the 2022 sequel, “Top Gun: Maverick.”
A low point in his career came with portraying Batman in Joel Schumacher’s flamboyant “Batman Forever,” alongside Nicole Kidman and Chris O’Donnell’s Robin, before George Clooney took on the cape in 1997’s “Batman & Robin” and after Michael Keaton’s portrayals in 1989’s “Batman” and 1992’s “Batman Returns.”
Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that Kilmer was constrained by the “serious man” aspects of the role, while Roger Ebert quipped that he was a “completely acceptable” substitute for Keaton. Kilmer, who wore the cape only once, blamed a large part of his performance on the rubber suit.
The Times was the first to report his death on Tuesday.
“When you’re in it, you can barely move, and people have to help you up and to sit down,” Kilmer says in “Val,” a moment voiced by his son Jack Kilmer because his father could not speak during much of his later years. “You can’t hear anything, and after a while people stop talking to you; it’s incredibly isolating. It was a struggle for me to deliver a performance beyond the costume, and it was frustrating until I realized my role in the film was simply to show up and stand where they told me.”
His subsequent projects included the cinematic adaptation of the 1960s TV series “The Saint,” for which he wore wigs, accents and glasses with meticulous care, and “The Island of Dr. Moreau” with Marlon Brando, which became one of the most troubled productions of the era.
David Gregory’s 2014 documentary “Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau” portrayed a cursed set that included a hurricane, Kilmer’s intimidation of director Richard Stanley, Stanley’s firing by fax (only to sneak back onto the set in disguise as an extra), and extensive rewrites by Kilmer and Brando.
Brando reportedly told Kilmer at one point, “It’s a job now, Val. A joke. We’ll get through this.” Kilmer wrote that Brando was as dispirited as anyone on set.
In 1996, Entertainment Weekly published a piece titled “The Man Hollywood Loves to Hate.” Directors Schumacher and John Frankenheimer—who finished “The Island of Dr. Moreau”—described Kilmer as difficult. Frankenheimer remarked that there were two things he would never do again: climb Mount Everest and work with Val Kilmer again.
Other artists spoke up in Kilmer’s defense. D. J. Caruso, who directed Kilmer in “The Salton Sea,” said he simply enjoyed talking through scenes and thriving on a director’s attention.
“Val needs to immerse himself in a character. I think what happened with directors like Frankenheimer and Schumacher is that Val would ask a lot of questions, and a guy like Schumacher would say, ‘You’re Batman! Just do it,’” Caruso told The New York Times in 2002.
After “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” Kilmer’s film work moved toward smaller projects, including David Mamet’s human-trafficking thriller “Spartan”; “Joe the King” (1999) in which he played an abusive, alcoholic father; and his portrayal of 1970s porn star John Holmes in “Wonderland” (2003). He also starred in a one-man show, “Citizen Twain,” in which he portrayed Mark Twain.
“I enjoy the depth and the soul that the piece holds, and the humanity Twain had for his peers and for the United States,” he told Variety in 2018. “And the comedy that’s always just beneath the surface, and how valuable his genius is to us today. We still wrestle with racism and greed. The same country, its greatness and its tragedy.”
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. At 17, he became the youngest drama student admitted to Juilliard in 1981.
Shortly after leaving Juilliard, his younger brother Wesley, then 15, suffered a epileptic seizure in the family’s hot tub and died on the way to the hospital.
“The strange and odd things about him. I have his art hanging. I like to think about what he would have created. He still inspires me,” Kilmer told The Times of his brother, who aspired to be a filmmaker.
While still at Juilliard, Kilmer co-wrote and appeared in the play “How It All Began,” and later turned down a role in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Outsiders” in favor of the Broadway production “Slab Boys” alongside Kevin Bacon and Sean Penn.
Kilmer published two poetry volumes (including “My Edens After Burns”) and earned a Grammy nomination in 2012 for the spoken-word album “The Mark of Zorro.” He was also a visual artist and a lifelong Christian Scientist.
He dated Cher, married and later divorced actress Joanne Whalley. He is survived by his two children, Mercedes and Jack.
“I have no regrets,” Kilmer told AP in 2021. “I have witnessed and experienced miracles.”
