Val Kilmer's Cause of Death Revealed by Family After Actor Dies at 65
On Tuesday, April 1, the Hollywood icon's daughter, Mercedes Kilmer, told The New York Times that the cause of death was pneumonia — she also noted he had previously battled throat cancer, which he was diagnosed with in 2014.
More from Spin:
Oneohtrix Point Never Teases 'Animals' Video Starring Val Kilmer
Watch Dave Grohl, Jack Black, and Val Kilmer's Goofy Jam Session
The news hit fans hard.
'Such sad news is a huge loss you will be missed Val Kilmer,' one person wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
'RIP to one of the most underrated actors of all time,' another said.
'Thanks for all of Your Great Work Val 💙,' chimed in a third.
But it wasn't just fans sharing their heartbreak — fellow celebs who knew and worked with Val took to social media too.
'See ya, pal. I'm going to miss you,' Josh Brolin wrote on Instagram. 'You were a smart, challenging, brave, uber-creative firecracker… I hope to see you up there in the heavens when I eventually get there.'
Michael Mann, who directed Kilmer in Heat, shared, 'I always marveled at the range, the brilliant variability within the powerful current of Val's character… After so many years of Val battling disease and maintaining his spirit, this is tremendously sad news.'
'RIP Val Kilmer. Thank you for defining so many of the movies of my childhood,' Josh Gad posted. 'You truly were an icon.'
Val's final on-screen moment came in 2022's Top Gun: Maverick, where he reunited with costar Tom Cruise. 'That was pretty emotional,' Cruise, 62, told Jimmy Kimmel in February 2023. 'I've known Val for decades, and for him to come back and play that character… he's such a powerful actor that he instantly became that character again.'
In addition to Mercedes, 33, Val is survived by his son Jack, 29. The actor shares both children with ex-wife Joanne Whalley, whom he was married to from 1988 to 1996 after meeting on the set of Willow.
To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
4 hours ago
- Forbes
‘Pips' Joins Wordle And Connections At The New York Times Games — Here's How It Works
There's a new game over at The New York Times. You can find it in the NYT Games App or at the newspaper's website, sitting next to Wordle and Letter Boxed and Strands and Connections. It's a bit different from the rest of the NYT game offerings. It's not quite as visually-forward as a game like Tiles. But it's not a word game at all, so really nothing like Wordle or Connections or Strands or the Crossword. In a way, it's a bit more like Sudoku, a game that requires you to place numbers in rows and boxes without repeating numbers in either space. There are Easy, Medium and Difficult tiers to solve each day. In Pips, you have a grid of multicolored boxes. Each colored area represents a different 'condition' that you have to achieve. You have a number of dominoes that you have to spend filling in the grid. You must use every domino and achieve every condition properly to win. There are Easy, Medium and Difficult tiers. Here's an example (the Difficult-tier Tuesday, August 19th puzzle): As you can see, the grid has a bunch of symbols and numbers with each color. On the far left, the three purple squares must not equal one another (hence the equal sign crossed out). The two pink squares next to that must equal a total of 0. The zig-zagging blue squares all must equal one another. You can click on dominoes to rotate them, and will need to since they have to be rotated to fit where they belong. Not shown on this grid are other conditions, such as 'less than' or 'more than.' It varies by grid. Blank spaces can have anything. How I tackled this Pips was pretty straightforward. First, I looked for the blank dominoes. I knew that the pink squares equalling 0 had to use these. Since there were only two, I knew those dominoes had to be in those squares, though I wasn't sure how to fit them just yet. Next, I looked for the most common 'pip' count. I knew I had to have 6 of the same count for the blue boxes. Only the dominoes with 1 pip had enough to fulfill that condition. There was a domino with a 1 and a blank, so I put that in at the top left (the 1 in blue, the blank in pink). Then I put the domino with the blank and the 4 pips above it. Then I just filled in every blue square. The 1 and 3 clearly had to go where the green box was (3) and the 1 and 2 where the orange 2 was etc. The dominoes fell like, well, dominoes after that. Here's the filled-in grid: It's pretty fun! I like that it requires you to think logically and creatively at the same time. It's not just a visual puzzle or just a math puzzle, but a bit of both. It's a nice change from my usual word puzzles also. You can play Pips right here.
Forbes
6 hours ago
- Forbes
NYT Strands Hints For Wednesday, August 20: Today's Spangram And Answers (Mint Condition)
Today's NYT Strands hints and answers. getty Before today's Strands hints, spangram and answers, here are Tuesday's: Forbes NYT Strands Hints For Tuesday, August 19: Today's Spangram And Answers (Dash It!) By Kris Holt Hey, folks! Today's NYT Strands hints, spangram and answers for Wednesday, August 20 are coming right up. The New York Times' Strands puzzle is a play on the classic word search. It's available on the NYT website and in the NYT Games app alongside the likes of Wordle and Connections (which we also cover in daily guides at Forbes Gaming ). There's a new game of Strands to play every day. The game will present you with a six by eight grid of letters. The aim is to find a group of words that have something in common, and you'll get a clue as to what that theme is. When you find a theme word, it will remain highlighted in blue. You'll also need to find a special word called a spangram. This tells you what the words have in common. The spangram links at least two sides of the board, but it may not start or end there. While the theme words will not be a proper name, the spangram can be a proper name. When you find the spangram, it will remain highlighted in yellow. Every letter is used once in one of the theme words and spangram. You can connect letters vertically, horizontally and diagonally, and it's possible to switch directions in the middle of a word. If you're playing on a touchscreen, double tap the last letter to submit your guess. If you find three valid words of at least four letters that are not part of the theme, you'll unlock the Hint button. Clicking this will highlight the letters that make up one of the theme words. Be warned: You'll need to be on your toes. Sometimes you'll need to fill the missing word(s) in a phrase. On other days, the game may revolve around synonyms or homophones. The difficulty will vary from day to day, and the puzzle creators will try to surprise you sometimes. Scroll slowly! Just after the hint for today's Strands puzzle, I'll reveal what the first two letters for the spangram and the other words are. The official theme hint for today's Strands puzzle is... Mint condition Need some extra help? Here's another hint... Said to make the world go around There are eight theme words to find today, including the spangram. Spoiler alert! Don't scroll any further down the page until you're ready to find out today's Strands opening letters. Here are the first two letters of every theme word in today's puzzle. They're ordered from left to right, then top to bottom by any letter of the word appearing for the first time: Before I reveal the other the full word list, I'll first tell you the spangram and show you where that is on the grid. This is your final spoiler warning! Scroll slowly, because I'll tell you what all the theme words are immediately after showing you where the spangram is. Today's Strands spangram is... GLOBAL CURRENCY Here's where you'll find it on the grid… New York Times Strands screenshot, showing the highlighted term GLOBAL CURRENCY Screenshot by Kris Holt Today's Strands theme words are... RUPEE GLOBAL CURRENCY POUND EURO KWANZA DOLLAR PESO RAND Here's what the completed grid looks like... Completed NYT Strands grid for August 20, including the words RUPEE, GLOBAL CURRENCY, POUND, EURO, KWANZA, DOLLAR, PESO and RAND. Screenshot by Kris Holt I used a hint to get me started because I was stumped and that gave me EURO. I then spotted "currency" but that wasn't the theme words. Hmm. After finding DOLLAR and RAND, the spangram became clearer. After that, it was easy enough to clean things up. I used one hint and the spangram was the fourth theme word I found. See you tomorrow for more Strands fun! Follow my blog for more coverage of Strands, Connections and other word games as well as video game news, insights and analysis. It helps me out a lot! If you want to chat about Strands, Connections and other stuff with like-minded folks, join my Discord server ! Also, follow me on Bluesky ! It's fun there.
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
Joe Caroff, Designer of the James Bond 007 Logo, Dies at 103
Joe Caroff, the unheralded graphic designer whose iconic creations included James Bond's 007 gun logo, posters for West Side Story and A Hard Day's Night and typography for Last Tango in Paris, Manhattan and Rollerball, died Sunday. He was 103. Caroff died one day short of birthday No. 104 in hospice care at his home in Manhattan, his sons, Peter and Michael Caroff, told The New York Times. More from The Hollywood Reporter Terence Stamp, Brooding Legend of British Cinema, Dies at 87 Dan Tana, Former Owner of Namesake Hollywood Restaurant, Dies at 90 Michael Sloan, 'The Equalizer' Co-Creator, Dies at 78 Caroff also cooked up the opening title sequences for such films as Richard Attenborough's A Bridge Too Far (1977), Volker Schlöndorff's Death of a Salesman (1985), Gene Saks' Brighton Beach Memoirs (1986) and Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), which pulled back to reveal a crown of thorns. His portfolio of posters included those for a dozen or so Woody Allen films plus Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad (1963), A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), Too Late the Hero (1970), Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970), Cabaret (1972), An Unmarried Woman (1978) and Gandhi (1982). Plus, Caroff designed the logo and title signature for Orion Pictures, several album covers for Decca Records and the logos for ABC's Olympic coverage (with the network's circular letters and five Olympic rings intertwined), ABC News and 20/20 (styled to resemble a pair of eyeglasses). The one quality he wanted his work to have was 'effervescence,' he said in the 2022 TCM documentary By Design: The Joe Caroff Story. 'I want it to have a life, it doesn't want to lie there flat.' For his first movie job — he would work on more than 300 campaigns during his career — United Artists executive David Chasman hired him to design the poster for West Side Story (1961), then asked him to come up with the letterhead for a publicity release tied to the first Bond film, Dr. No. (Chasman had designed the poster for the 1962 movie.) 'He said, 'I need a little decorative thing on top,'' Caroff recalled in 2021. 'I knew [Bond's] designation was 007, and when I wrote the stem of the seven, I thought, 'That looks like the handle of a gun to me.' It was very spontaneous, no effort, it was an instant piece of creativity.' Inspired by Ian Fleming's favorite gun, a Walther PPK, Caroff attached a barrel and trigger to the 007 and for his work received $300, the going rate for such an assignment, he said. Even though the logo, though altered in subtle ways, has been featured on every Bond film and on millions of pieces of merchandise, he received no credit, no residuals, no royalties. The logo did, however, bring him 'a lot of business,' he said. 'It was like a little publicity piece for me.' Joseph Caroff was born on Aug. 18, 1921, in Linden, New Jersey. He had four older sisters and a younger brother. His father, Julius, was a painter who 'could make a plaster wall look like a wood wall … it wasn't as if he just painted it, he rendered it,' he said. While attending Brooklyn's Pratt Institute, he assisted French graphic designer Jean Carlu on the making of the 1942 propaganda poster 'America's Answer! Production' for the U.S. Office of War Information. It featured a large, gloved hand on a wrench. (Carlu, whose right arm had been severed in a Paris trolley accident, had designed the poster for the 1921 Charlie Chaplin film The Kid). 'At Carlu there were no set times,' he told Thilo von Debschitz in a 2021 interview for Eye magazine. 'Sometimes he asked me to come at eight in the morning, sometimes not before 10 in the evening. I was able to take part in large design projects and learn a lot of different techniques from him.' Caroff graduated in 1942 after majoring in advertising design, being elected class president for three straight years and serving as art editor on the school yearbook, Prattonia. Five days after getting married, Caroff in 1943 headed overseas to serve in the U.S. Army, and he would load propaganda leaflets that he had worked on with Carlu months earlier into planes that would drop them all over Europe. Back home after 36 months away, Caroff landed a job at Alan Berni & Associates, then opened his own business designing book jackets. The first one he got paid for was for the cover of Norman Mailer's debut novel, The Naked and the Dead, first published in 1948. 'I loved doing that work,' he said in the TCM documentary, 'primarily because it was an opportunity to read a book, to interpret it and then come up with a cover design that I felt best expressed what was in that book.' Caroff got the idea for the West Side Story poster — it famously features textured letters that resemble bricks and the ballet-like outlines of lovers Maria and Tony on fire escapes — after seeing clips of the film. (He said it helped that he was a West Sider in real life.) One of his fun touches on the poster for The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night was putting a knot in a guitar handle. 'It frankly was just a whim,' he said. 'It doesn't do anything except to create a quirky note, nothing more.' After 18 years going it alone, he founded the agency J. Caroff Associates in 1965, and he and his 22-person staff, working out of offices on East 57th Street in Manhattan, often handled 10 film projects at a time. As von Debschitz related in an interview for Print, 'His poster for Tattoo — a [1981] erotic thriller produced by [frequent client] Joseph E. Levine — caused a scandal because it depicted a naked woman with bound feet. Feminists (and probably pubescent men) tore the posters down in the subway, which led to even more publicity. Levine told Caroff, 'You made out with your fucking poster better than I made out with my fucking movie.'' He invented an undulating typeface for Last Tango in Paris (1972) and came up with treatments that used roller skates and high rises to spell out Rollerball and Manhattan for those 1975 and '79 movies, respectively. He also fashioned a train out of the title for the poster for The Great Train Robbery (1978). He retired in 2006 at age 86 to concentrate on painting. In addition to his sons, survivors include his daughters-in-law, Ruth and Cynthia, and his granddaughter, Jennifer. His wife of 81 years, Phyllis, a longtime professor at the Hunter College School of Social Work whom he met at a New Year's Eve party, died in February, four days shy of 101. After decades of being ignored by Bond producers, Caroff received an Omega watch with an 007 engraving from Barbara Broccoli, Michael G. Wilson and EON Productions as a 100th birthday gift. Caroff was asked if he had saved any of his original renderings over the years. Think how much those would be worth! Alas, he had tossed pretty much everything. 'Probably not a smart thing to do, but I never attached what I was doing to any greatness,' he said. 'I was just working, period. I was just being an artist.' Best of The Hollywood Reporter The 25 Best U.S. Film Schools in 2025 The 40 Greatest Needle Drops in Film History The 40 Best Films About the Immigrant Experience Solve the daily Crossword
