Val Kilmer obituary: A difficult man but a brilliant actor

BBC News

02-04-2025

Val Kilmer, who has died at the age of 65, was an underrated actor.He had extraordinary range: excelling in comedies, westerns, crime dramas, musical biopics and action-adventures films alike.And perhaps his best performance combined his skills as a stage actor with a fine singing voice, to bring to life 1960s-counterculture icon Jim Morrison, in Oliver Stone's film The Doors.Critic Roger Ebert wrote: "If there is an award for the most unsung leading man of his generation, Val Kilmer should get it."In movies as different as Real Genius, Top Gun, Top Secret!, he has shown a range of characters so convincing that it's likely most people, even now, don't realise they were looking at the same actor."
Val Edward Kilmer was born, on 31 December 1959, into a middle-class family in Los Angeles.His parents were Christian Scientists, a movement to which Kilmer would adhere for the rest of his life.He attended Chatsworth High School, in the San Fernando Valley, where future actor Kevin Spacey was among his classmates and where he developed a love of drama.Kilmer's ambition was to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (Rada), in London, but his application was rejected because, at 17, he was a year below the minimum entry age.Instead, Kilmer became the then youngest pupil to enrol at the Julliard School, in New York, one of the world's most prestigious drama conservatories.
A gifted student, Kilmer co-wrote and made his stage debut in How It All Began, a play based on the life of a German radical, at the Public Theatre.But he recalled a tough regime."I had a mean teacher once, who kind of said, 'How dare you think you can act Shakespeare? You don't know how to walk across the room yet,'… and in a way, that's true," Kilmer said.Minor parts, including in Henry IV Part 1 and As You Like It, preceded a meatier role as Alan Downie in the 1983 production of Slab Boys, with Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon.Kilmer made his film debut in spy spoof Top Secret!, written by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker. He played star Nick Rivers, sucked into an East German plot to reunify Germany.The film proved Kilmer had a good voice and he later released an album under the name of his fictional character.He also published a book of poetry, My Edens After Burns, some of which reflected on a relationship with a young Michelle Pfeiffer.
Two years later, Kilmer played Lt Tom "Iceman" Kazansky, Tom Cruise's deadly air force rival in Top Gun.A thrilling patriotic Cold War buddy movie, it cost just $15m (£12m) to make but took more than $350m at the box office.Kilmer's increased profile led to renewed press interest in his eventful private life.He dated Daryl Hannah, Angelia Jolie and Cher. In 1988, he married Joanne Whalley, whom he had met when they appeared in the fantasy film Willow,The couple had two children but divorced after eight years of marriage.Despite his rising popularity in the cinema, Kilmer did not abandon the stage, playing Hamlet at the 1988 Colorado Shakespeare Festival, and then Giovanni in a New York production of 'Tis Pity She's a Whore.
But in the 1990s, he proved he could carry a major film as a lead actor.Director Stone had long wanted to make a biopic of The Doors, focusing on the band's singer, who had died of a drugs overdose in Paris in 1971.A number of actors were considered, including John Travolta and Richard Gere, before Stone chose Kilmer because of his physical resemblance to Morrison and strong singing voice.In his trademark single-minded approach, Kilmer lost weight and learned 50 Doors songs by heart, as well as spending time in a studio perfecting Morrison's stage style.And in his 1996 biography of Oliver Stone, James Riordan said the surviving Doors could not tell recordings of Kilmer singing their songs from Morrison's original.Kilmer also played Elvis Presley in Tony Scott's True Romance, written by Quentin Tarantino, and sickly alcoholic gambler and dentist Doc Holliday in the 1993 film Tombstone - a retelling of the story of Wyatt Earp's gunfight at the OK Corral, which some critics called his finest performance.
In 1995, Kilmer replaced Michael Keaton in the third of a trilogy of Batman films, Batman Returns. But he later said he had been uncomfortable with the role and declined to play it in the follow-up, Batman and Robin.Kilmer's reputation for being difficult on set had reportedly exploded into open warfare with the director, Joel Schumacher, normally the most temperate of men, who called his leading man's behaviour "difficult and childish".John Frankenheimer, who directed Kilmer in The Island of Dr Moreau, was even blunter. "I don't like Val Kilmer," he said. "I don't like his work ethic and I don't want to be associated with him ever again."But Kilmer remained much in demand and reportedly received $6m for his role as Simon Templar in the 1997 film The Saint - although, critics were not overwhelmed by the film or his performance.
In the early 2000s, there was no shortage of film appearances - but Kilmer's cinema career had hit a plateau.In 2004, he returned to the theatre, in a musical production of The Ten Commandments, in Los Angeles.A year later, Kilmer starred in London's West End, in Andrew Rattenbury's adaptation of The Postman Always Rings Twice - as Frank Chambers, the drifter played by Jack Nicholson in the 1981 film.And in 2006, he reunited with director Scott, for sci-fi film Deja Vu, which received a mixed response. Kilmer also voiced Kitt - the futuristic car - in a pilot for television series Nightrider.He spent years working on a one-man show, Citizen Twain, which examined the relationship between Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy and her long-term critic writer Mark Twain. A 90-minute film was eventually released, directed by Kilmer.
In 2014, Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer.Chemotherapy and radiation left him with a tube in his trachea and difficulty breathing.As a Christian Scientist, Kilmer had mixed views about seeking medical interventions and at times ascribed physical improvements to the power of prayer rather than medicine. On occasion, he denied he had cancer at all. In 2021, Kilmer made Val, a documentary about his life.It delved into his darkest places and experiences, including his brother Wesley's accidental drowning as a teenager and the breakdown of his marriage.
A year later, there was time for a final starring role. Planned for a decade, Top Gun: Maverick reunited Kilmer and Cruise, updating their former rivalry in the post-Cold War era.Kilmer's cancer could not be hidden. Instead, it was written into his character's story."It's time to let go," Iceman tells Maverick in one poignant scene. Kilmer will be remembered as a complicated man and a fine but difficult actor.He never embraced the kind of Hollywood party lifestyle his looks and fame might have brought him. Instead, he tended to slip away to spend time with his children, on a ranch he owned in New Mexico."I don't really have too much of a notion about success or popularity, " Kilmer once said."I never cultivated fame, I never cultivated a persona, except possibly the desire to be regarded as an actor."