Val Kilmer

• 1. Introduction

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  Val Kilmer spent decades being praised in a way that sounded almost like an apology. In 1992, the film critic Roger Ebert remarked, "if there is an award for the most unsung leading man of his generation, Kilmer should get it". By then Kilmer had played in comedies, dramas, westerns, science fiction and fantasy. Films that featured him grossed more than $3.85 billion worldwide. Even so, the word unsung stuck to him for the rest of his life. Why did an actor with that range and that box office record stay half-hidden behind his own characters? Why did colleagues describe working with him in such opposite terms? And what happened when the voice that carried so many memorable roles was taken from him?

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• 2. Juilliard Boy

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  Val Edward Kilmer was born on the 31st of December 1959 in Los Angeles, the second of three sons. His mother was Gladys Swanette. His father, Eugene Dorris Kilmer, was an industrialist and developer. The couple divorced in 1968, when Val was 8 years old, and his mother remarried two years later.

  In 1977, his younger brother Wesley, who had epilepsy, drowned in a hot tub at the age of 16. Kilmer had been raised in the beliefs of Christian Science, and he held to them for most of his life.

  At Chatsworth High School, his friends included the future actors Kevin Spacey and Mare Winningham, and Kilmer dated Winningham. He then became the youngest person up to that time accepted into the Drama Division of the Juilliard School, where he joined a class known as Group 10. His friendship with Spacey ended there, over a financial matter.

  The stage came first. In 1981 he acted in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1 at The Public Theater. In 1983 he joined The Slab Boys, a working-class play by John Byrne, alongside Kevin Bacon, Sean Penn and Jackie Earle Haley. He turned down Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders that year because of his theater commitments.

  That same year he made his first screen acting appearance outside television commercials. It was an episode of the ABC Afterschool Special called One Too Many, an educational drama about drinking and driving. It co-starred a young Michelle Pfeiffer, and it did not air until 1985.

  Kilmer also wrote. In 1983 he self-published a book of his own poems, My Edens After Burns, which included verses inspired by his time with Pfeiffer. The book is now hard to find, and known second-hand copies cost $300 and up.

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• 3. Iceman to Madmartigan

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  Top Secret!, released in 1984, gave Kilmer his first top billing. The film was a comedy spoof of spy movies, and he played an American rock and roll star named Nick Rivers. Kilmer sang every song himself, and an album was released under the character's name.

  After a break spent backpacking through Europe, he took the lead in the 1985 comedy Real Genius. Around this time he turned down a role in David Lynch's Blue Velvet. He chose instead to play the naval aviator Tom Kazansky, call sign Iceman, in Top Gun, opposite Tom Cruise.

  Top Gun grossed over $344 million worldwide. It made Kilmer a major star. Two television films followed, The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Man Who Broke 1,000 Chains.

  Then came the fantasy Willow, in which Kilmer played the swordsman Madmartigan. On its set he met his co-star Joanne Whalley. The two married in March 1988, and they had two children, Mercedes and Jack Kilmer.

  That same year he returned to the stage as Hamlet at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. In 1989 he played the lead in Kill Me Again, once more opposite Whalley, and he took the title role in Gore Vidal's Billy the Kid.

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• 4. Playing Jim Morrison

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  Oliver Stone's film The Doors, about the rock band of the same name, nearly lost its star over a point of principle. Kilmer spoke with Stone early on about how Jim Morrison's substance abuse would be shown. He felt Morrison had picked the wrong heroes. He believed the story could be told "a thousand different ways" and did not want to play a habitual drug user. Stone agreed.

  Kilmer memorized the lyrics to all of Morrison's songs before his audition. He then sent Stone a video of himself performing some of them. Stone was not impressed. Paul A. Rothchild, the original producer of the Doors, reacted differently, saying, "I was shaken by it". He suggested that Kilmer be recorded in a studio.

  Once cast, Kilmer went to Doors tribute concerts and read Morrison's poetry. For close to a year before production, he dressed like Morrison and spent time at his old hangouts along the Sunset Strip.

  The result unsettled the people who knew the original. Members of the band said they had trouble telling Kilmer's voice from Morrison's. Rothchild played Kilmer's version of "The End" for guitarist Robby Krieger. Krieger told him, "I'm really glad they got 'The End'. We never got a recording of that live with Jim and now we've got it." Keyboardist Ray Manzarek was less enthusiastic about Stone's interpretation.

  The role also stayed with Kilmer after filming. He received counseling to help him separate himself from the character. The band's drummer John Densmore later wrote, "As an actor, Val's channeling of Jim (Morrison) was so close, he gave me the creeps on the set of Oliver Stone's biopic. He should have been nominated for an Oscar as Best Actor."

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• 5. Doc and the Bat

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  Elvis Presley was one of Kilmer's smaller early 1990s parts. In True Romance he played the singer in a film written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Tony Scott, who had also directed Top Gun. Around then Kilmer also starred in the mystery thriller Thunderheart and the action comedy The Real McCoy.

  In 1993 he played the gunfighter Doc Holliday in the western Tombstone, alongside Kurt Russell. The character plays Chopin's Nocturne in E minor, Op. 72, No. 1. Kilmer did not play the piano, so he practiced that single piece for months.

  The performance changed his career. In December 1993, director Joel Schumacher watched Tombstone and decided Kilmer was right for Batman. The part still belonged to Michael Keaton. In July 1994, Keaton chose not to return after 1992's Batman Returns, citing "creative differences". William Baldwin was reported as a top contender, but within days Kilmer was cast. He accepted without knowing who the director would be and without reading the script.

  Batman Forever opened in June 1995 and succeeded at the box office despite mixed reviews. Critics split on Kilmer. Janet Maslin of The New York Times thought he was a poor successor to Keaton. Ebert had kind words for him, and Batman co-creator Bob Kane told Cinescape that Kilmer gave the best interpretation of the character so far. Leonard Maltin praised the portrayal in his 2009 movie guide.

  The same year, Kilmer appeared with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in Heat, playing the thief Chris Shiherlis. That film is now regarded as one of the best crime dramas of the 1990s.

  In February 1996, Kilmer decided not to return as Batman. He felt the hero was being pushed aside in favor of the villains, and he had a scheduling conflict with The Saint. Reports also pointed to a poor working relationship with Schumacher. George Clooney took over the cape in 1997's Batman & Robin.

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• 6. The Long Middle

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  The Island of Dr. Moreau, in 1996, put Kilmer opposite Marlon Brando and was poorly received. That year he also starred with Michael Douglas in The Ghost and the Darkness. In 1997 he took the title role of Simon Templar in The Saint, which he saw as a lighter, more playful kind of thriller.

  The film let him play several disguises, including a mad artist and a Russian mob boss. Kilmer wrote the poetry that appears in it. He received a salary of $6 million, and the film grossed $169.4 million worldwide.

  In 1998 he voiced both Moses and God in the animated The Prince of Egypt. The same year he traveled to Iraq with AmeriCares to deliver humanitarian aid, on the first US humanitarian airlift to Iraq since 1990. In 1999 he played a blind man in At First Sight, which he called the hardest role he had ever had.

  The year 2000 brought a Warner Bros. box office disaster, Red Planet. It also brought a supporting turn as the painter Willem de Kooning in Pollock, and his first turn as host of Saturday Night Live. Later came Wonderland, in which he played John Holmes, and the thriller Spartan, for which he received training modeled on Delta Force. Oliver Stone's Alexander, in 2004, drew poor reviews.

  On stage in 2004 he played Moses in The Ten Commandments: The Musical at the Kodak Theatre, a cast that included Adam Lambert. He also appeared on Entourage as a Sherpa who grew and sold high-quality cannabis. In 2005 he spent June to September on the London stage in The Postman Always Rings Twice. After Hurricane Katrina he made several trips to New Orleans to help with relief.

  Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, in 2005, paired him with Robert Downey, Jr. Critics liked it, but it received only a limited release. The Phoenix Film Critics Society later named it Overlooked Film of the Year. The site Filmink wondered why Kilmer never staged a comeback in the 2000s, comparing him with Alec Baldwin, who returned through 30 Rock.

  He still found odd and memorable work. In 2008 he voiced the talking car KITT in Knight Rider, uncredited, after Will Arnett had to step aside. In 2010 he played the villain Dieter Von Cunth in MacGruber, and he finally worked with his old friend Francis Ford Coppola on Twixt.

  One project mattered more to him than the rest. Citizen Twain was a one-man show about Mark Twain, which Kilmer wrote and performed in 2012 in Los Angeles. He had shown it at William Woods University in 2010, where he received an honorary doctorate. The 90-minute film version, Cinema Twain, was his directorial debut. It grew from an earlier idea for a film about Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Christian Science church, and Twain, one of her most famous critics.

  In 2012 he also received a Grammy nomination for Best Spoken Word. In 2013 he voiced Bravo in Disney's Planes, with his Top Gun co-star Anthony Edwards voicing Echo. A year later, in 2014, he had to cancel a Citizen Twain performance after losing his voice.

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• 7. Difficult or Kind

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  Richard Stanley directed Kilmer for only three days on The Island of Dr. Moreau before being fired. He recalled, "Val would arrive, and an argument would happen." His replacement, John Frankenheimer, said, "I don't like Val Kilmer, I don't like his work ethic, and I don't want to be associated with him ever again."

  Other accounts piled up. Kilmer was said to have feuded with Marlon Brando on that film and with Tom Sizemore on Red Planet and Heat. Joel Schumacher called him "childish and impossible". Michael Biehn, his Tombstone co-star, said, "People ask me what it's like to work with Val Kilmer. I don't know. Never met him. Never shook his hand." Stephen Lang, also from Tombstone, described telling Kilmer that he would simply ignore their first 90 seconds together each day.

  Other co-stars described a different man. Mira Sorvino, who worked with him on At First Sight, said he was easy to work with and professional. She added that she hated furthering rumors about difficult people because they could damage careers. Kurt Russell answered with an unqualified yes when asked if working with Kilmer was great.

  Drew Barrymore, who appeared in Batman Forever, remembered him as "so nurturing and kind and safe". Hilarie Burton worked with him on Bloodworth, and she said Kilmer cut a gratuitous sex scene between them because it did not serve the story. He replaced it with a scene of their characters eating barbecued ribs. She wrote, "I hope every young actor has a Val in their life."

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• 8. A Voice Lost

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  Kilmer was a long-time smoker, and in 2014 he noticed a lump in his throat. He did not seek medical care until he started vomiting blood. In January 2015, aged 55, he was hospitalized. Kilmer wrote on his Facebook page that he had a complication and stayed under the watchful eye of the UCLA ICU, and he denied having a tumor or an operation.

  His faith shaped how he spoke about the illness. After the diagnosis of throat cancer, he referred to it in the press as "the suggestion of throat cancer". He agreed to chemotherapy at his children's request, though it went against his religion. In April 2017 he said he had experienced a "healing of cancer".

  By December 2017, The Hollywood Reporter had revealed a two-year battle with throat cancer. A procedure on his trachea had reduced his voice to a rasp. To speak, he plugged an electric voice box into his trachea. He went through chemotherapy and two tracheotomies. In 2020 he reported four years cancer-free, but he still struggled with treatments, including a feeding tube.

  He told his own story in two forms. His memoir, I'm Your Huckleberry, appeared in 2020. The documentary Val followed in 2021, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and later earned two Critics' Choice Documentary Awards.

  Technology offered another route back. In 2021, Kilmer worked with the London software company Sonantic to recreate his voice from archived recordings. The company created more than 40 vocal models to find the closest match. Director Joseph Kosinski said that Top Gun: Maverick, released in 2022, did not use the Sonantic technology. Kilmer's real voice was digitally altered for clarity, and he returned as Admiral Tom Kazansky.

  His likeness was later used in a stranger way. For As Deep as the Grave, which he had been slated to act in before his diagnosis, his likeness and voice were generated entirely with artificial intelligence. Kilmer never filmed any scenes. The filmmakers worked with his family estate and had the support of his children.

  Kilmer died on the 1st of April 2025 at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, aged 65. He had been set to appear at the Beverly Hills Film Festival that day. His immediate cause of death was listed as pneumonia. The death certificate also listed respiratory failure, squamous cell carcinoma at the base of the tongue and malnutrition. He was cremated six days later, on the 7th of April.

  Tributes came quickly. Michael Mann, who directed him in Heat, praised the range and variability in his work. Tom Cruise asked for a moment of silence at CinemaCon, saying, "he loved movies and he gave a lot to all of us." Oliver Stone called him turbulent, contradictory and tortured, but always exciting and fresh. Stone's last words on the matter were, "We need more Vals."

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