Val Kilmer, a character actor as famous for his idiosyncrasies as he was for his widely lauded performances in hit films such as “Top Gun,” “Tombstone” and “Batman Forever,” has died at age 65.
A devout Christian Scientist who eschewed traditional medical treatment, Kilmer died Tuesday in Los Angeles, according to the New York Times. The actor’s daughter, Mercedes Kilmer, told the newspaper the cause of death was pneumonia. Kilmer had been treated for throat cancer, a procedure that largely left him voiceless. He said in 2021 that he was cancer-free.
The actor rose to fame in the 1980s as a Julliard-trained prodigy with leading-man potential on par with his “Top Gun” co-star Tom Cruise. At his peak, he courted Cher and Cindy Crawford, made $6 million per movie and earned a reputation for being all but impossible to work with.
Kilmer was exacting about his work, ambivalent about fame and disinclined to spend much time with the press. After his triumphant portrayal of Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone’s 1991 biopic “The Doors,” he moved to a vast New Mexico ranch where he rode horses, raised buffalo and wrote poetry.
On set, it was said he could be petulant and exhausting, an attitude that alienated directors and his co-stars, including Marlon Brando on the set of “The Island of Dr. Moreau.”
After director Joel Schumacher wrapped up “Batman Forever,” he 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.”
Kilmer’s reputation was such that the starring roles dwindled in the late 2000s after his last critically acclaimed lead performance, in the 2005 comedy “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” opposite Robert Downey Jr.
Plagued by the Internal Revenue Service, disgruntled neighbors and bad PR, Kilmer had to sell his ranch to pay back taxes and overdue child support. After that, he devoted himself over the course of a decade to “Citizen Twain,” a touring one-man show that he wrote, directed and starred in as a resurrected Mark Twain. He took the show to more than 30 cities over the years.
Largely at the insistence of Tom Cruise, Kilmer reprised his role as Tom “Iceman” Kazansky in “Top Gun: Maverick.” It was the highest-grossing film of 2022 and generally applauded by critics. Though he had to use AI-based dubbing technology to speak his lines, his presence was enough for fans.
“In one fictional moment, he gives us something unmistakably, irreducibly real, partly by puncturing the fantasy of human invincibility that his co-star has never stopped trying to sell,” Times film critic Justin Chang said of Kilmer’s performance.
Born Dec. 31, 1959, in Los Angeles, Kilmer grew up in Chatsworth, one of three brothers. His Texas-born father was an industrialist and a San Fernando Valley real estate developer. His mother was from a Swedish family. His parents divorced when he was 9, and Kilmer and his brothers lived with their father.
As a boy, Kilmer performed in school plays and appeared in TV commercials. At 16, he was accepted to the Julliard drama program. But the night before he left for New York, his youngest brother had a seizure and fell in the family’s backyard pool and drowned. Kilmer went from his brother’s funeral straight to acting school. He said he never fully recovered from the loss.
In New York, Kilmer appeared off-Broadway with Kevin Bacon and Sean Penn in the 1983 play “The Slab Boys.” He made his TV debut in an “ABC Afterschool Special” about drunk driving, opposite a young Michelle Pfeiffer. Later, he self-published a book of poetry inspired by her, copies of which now sell for $400.
Even early in his film career, Kilmer’s choices were versatile and eccentric. He turned down a role in Francis Ford Coppola’s beloved 1983 adaptation of “The Outsiders” because he was committed to a play. He turned down David Lynch’s offer of a role in “Blue Velvet.”
Instead, he made his film debut as a 1950s rock star in the 1984 spy movie spoof “Top Secret!” and released an album covering the film’s songs. Then, without a word, he disappeared for more than a year to go backpacking around Europe.
When he returned, Kilmer broke through as Tom Cruise’s rival naval pilot in the 1986 hit “Top Gun.” He followed that by playing a disgraced knight in Ron Howard’s 1987 fantasy “Willow.” Howard later called Kilmer “childish” and “impossible.”
But it wasn’t until Kilmer portrayed Jim Morrison that he earned movie star status. Stone said at the time that he cast him because he liked his “implied arrogance.”
To prepare, Kilmer spent a year in Sunset Strip clubs dressed as a rock star and memorized the lyrics to all Morrison’s songs. In the film, he performed 15 songs so convincingly the remaining members of the Doors said they couldn’t distinguish his vocals from Morrison’s.
During the next few years, Kilmer was critically lauded as the alcoholic gunfighter Doc Holliday in the 1993 western “Tombstone.” Just before filming began, his father died of cancer.
Michael Biehn said his co-star dove so deeply into his character as Doc Holliday that Val Kilmer ceased to exist.
“People ask me what it’s like to work with Val Kilmer. I don’t know. Never met him. Never shook his hand. I know Doc Holliday, but I don’t know Kilmer.”
In 1995, Kilmer starred as the superhero in “Batman Forever,” which grossed $336 million. But later, director Schumacher called him “one of the most psychologically troubled people I’ve ever worked with.” That same year, he earned praise as Robert De Niro’s henchman in Michael Mann’s crime drama “Heat.”
But Kilmer’s reputation never fully recovered after the 1996 moviemaking disaster “The Island of Dr. Moreau.” Both directors of that film vowed never to work with him again.
Kilmer continued to appear in a range of films but mostly in cameos and minor roles. In 2020, he published his memoir, “I’m Your Huckleberry,” a raw and candid journey through the extremes of his life. The Washington Post described it as “a zigzaggging ride through Kilmer’s distinctive life and career, penned by a spiritual storyteller with no qualms about indulging in his eccentricities.”
He addressed his tattered reputation head on in the bestseller.
“In an unflinching attempt to empower directors, actors and other collaborators to honor the truth and essence of each project, an attempt to breathe Suzukian life into a myriad of Hollywood moments, I had been deemed difficult and alienated the head of every major studio,” he wrote.
He also opened Kamp Kilmer, an artistic collective in Hollywood that provided space and company for poets, painters, musicians and filmmakers. He often started and ended his days at the studio on Melrose Avenue.
“With little voice, my creative juices were boiling over and pouring out of me,” Kilmer wrote on the collective’s website. “I started creating again, painting, writing anything I could. I felt the art healing me.”
Kilmer’s survivors include daughter Mercedes and son Jack.
Piccalo is a former Los Angeles Times staff writer.