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New York Post
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Denise Alexander, ‘General Hospital' and ‘Days of Our Lives' star, dead at 85
Soap opera star Denise Alexander has died. She was 85. The actress passed away on March 5, Variety reported on Friday. Alexander was best known for her roles as Lesley Webber on 'General Hospital' and Susan Hunter Martin on 'Days of Our Lives.' Advertisement 8 Denise Alexander in 2002. WireImage 'General Hospital' executive producer Frank Valentini mourned Alexander's death on X (formerly Twitter). 'I am so very sorry to hear of Denise Alexander's passing,' he wrote. 'She broke barriers on-screen and off, portraying Dr. Lesley Webber – one of the first female doctors on Daytime Television – for nearly five decades.' Advertisement 8 Denise Alexander on 'General Hospital' in 1981. Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images Valentini continued, 'It meant so much to have her reprise her role in recent years and I am honored to have had the opportunity to work with her. On behalf of the entire General Hospital family, I extend my heartfelt sympathies to her family, friends, and longtime fans. May she rest in peace.' Genie Francis, who played Alexander's TV daughter on 'General Hospital,' also shared a tribute to the late actress on social media. 'Thank you mama, for so much more than u know. #GH,' Francis, 62, wrote alongside photos of the pair. Advertisement 8 'General Hospital' stars Craig Huebing, Genie Francis, Michael Gregory, Denise Alexander and John Beradino in 1978. Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images 'Days of Our Lives' star Susan Seaforth Hayes shared her own Instagram tribute to Alexander, calling her 'a friend to treasure and an actress to applaud. ' 'Such happy memories of her years in Salem and her great success on General Hospital,' said Hayes, 81. 'We both began as child actors, both had strong mothers and both were raised as Christian Scientists in our early years.' 8 Denise Alexander, Susan Seaforth Hayes in 'Days of Our Lives' in 1971. NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images Advertisement 'I was grateful for her wisdom, taste, humor, and goodness every time I saw her,' she added about Alexander. 'It was never enough. And my love for her will never be over.' Alexander was born in New York City in 1939. Her father was talent agent Alec Alexander, who worked with stars such as Frank Gorshin and Sal Mineo. 8 Denise Alexander attends the Hollywood Sign's 90th Anniversary in 2013. FilmMagic The actress made her TV debut in 1949 on 'The Ford Theater Hour.' Her first feature film was Don Siegal's 1956 movie 'Crime in the Streets.' In 1966, Alexander was cast in 'Days of Our Lives.' Her character, Susan Hunter Martin, dealt with the death of her son and murdered her husband during Alexander's seven years on the show. 8 Denise Alexander, Bill Hayes in 'Days of Our Lives.' NBCUniversal via Getty Images After leaving 'Days' in 1973, Alexander was immediately cast as Lesley Webber in 'General Hospital.' The role earned Alexander a Daytime Emmy Award nomination in 1976. Alexander starred on 'General Hospital' on and off for almost 50 years. Lesley was killed in 1984 and then resurrected in 1996. Alexander's last appearance on the soap was in 2021. Advertisement 8 Rachel Ames, Denise Alexander, Braden Walkes, Greg Vaughan, Rebecca Herbst, Jackie Zeman in 'General Hospital' in 2007. ABC 8 Denise Alexander in a photo shoot for 'General Hospital' in 1983. Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images 'I was sad when I left the show,' she told We Love Soaps in 2010. 'When you have played a character that long and had fun with it, you can feel the fan's sorrow.' Advertisement 'I missed the character,' Alexander added, 'and it's a fun thing for me she came back to life. It's a character I know, and there's still a few people I know there.' Alexander is survived by her stepdaughter, Elizabeth Colla, from her marriage to director and producer Richard A. Colla, who died in 2010.
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Val Kilmer's Christian Scientist Beliefs & How They Impacted His Cancer Treatment
tragic death has fans questioning the late actor's much-discussed beliefs in Christian Science. The Top Gun star recently breathed his last, passing away at the age of 65 following a prolonged battle with throat cancer. While Kilmer engaged in several medical procedures over the years to cure his ailment, the actor almost went another way due to his religious philosophy. Here's everything you need to know regarding the late actor's views about Christian Science and how they affected his treatment process. The actor, who famously portrayed the Dark Knight in Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever, was a devoted Christian Scientist throughout his life. Believers of the said notion, despite viewing God as an omnipresent being, do not consider him to be the creator of the material world. Most importantly, Christian Scientists perceive diseases and ailments as errors of the mind and give precedence to spiritual healing in favor of modern medicine. Val Kilmer, a staunch believer in Christian Science, had a similar viewpoint about his ailment as well. He preferred to cure his cancer through praying and taking the assistance of a spiritual advisor, much to the dismay of his family. Nevertheless, Kilmer ultimately decided to follow a more traditional method of treatment and underwent several prescribed surgeries, including radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and tracheostomy, to reassure his family members, as per Metro. Despite forgoing the solutions prescribed in Christian Science, Kilmer noted previously that the treatment he ended up following gave him more pain than the cancer itself. The intense treatment, which included surgeries, ended up damaging his vocal cords and also forced him to eat through a tube. In an Amazon documentary about his ailment, Kilmer explained his predicament, stating, 'I can't speak without plugging this hole [in my throat]. You have to make the choice to breathe or to eat.' Having received his cancer diagnosis back in 2014, Val Kilmer declared in 2020 that he had been cancer-free for four years. However, the actor continued having health complications over the years and passed away from pneumonia on April 1, 2025. Originally reported by Apoorv Rastogi on The post Val Kilmer's Christian Scientist Beliefs & How They Impacted His Cancer Treatment appeared first on Mandatory.
BBC News
02-04-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Val Kilmer obituary: A difficult man but a brilliant actor
Val Kilmer, who has died at the age of 65, was an underrated had extraordinary range: excelling in comedies, westerns, crime dramas, musical biopics and action-adventures films 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 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 parents were Christian Scientists, a movement to which Kilmer would adhere for the rest of his 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 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 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 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 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 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 film proved Kilmer had a good voice and he later released an album under the name of his fictional 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 increased profile led to renewed press interest in his eventful private 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 and radiation left him with a tube in his trachea and difficulty 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 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 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 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."
Boston Globe
25-03-2025
- Health
- Boston Globe
A book that changed my mind: ‘The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down'
Centuries ago, the Greek physician Hippocrates rejected spiritual explanations of epilepsy. 'It seems to me,' he remarked, 'that the disease is no more divine than any other. It has a natural cause just as other diseases have. Men think it is divine merely because they don't understand it.' Medical science applies his verdict more broadly. Witchcraft, demonic possession, angry ghosts, divine retribution: These are superstitious placeholders for ignorance. As knowledge progresses, they are replaced by natural causes. Germs, not vengeful spirits; genetics, not cosmic destiny. Advertisement For most of my life, I insisted on the obvious and exclusive truth of this perspective. I treated belief in supernatural explanation — and its companion, religious healing — with contempt and impatience. Contempt because humoring fantasies is for children, not adults. Impatience because those falsehoods are dangerous. When Christian Scientists let God do the healing, people die. Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up My scorn extended to spiritual-adjacent 'woo-woo' healing and alternative medicine like crystals, natural healing, and the power of positive thinking. There is no such thing as alternative medicine, I believed. There is only medicine that works and medicine that doesn't. And then I read Anne Fadiman's modern classic, 'The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down.' All it took was one book to redirect that impatient contempt toward my prior self, so full of condescending hubris, so ignorant and dangerous. The title translates the term for epilepsy used by the Hmong people, an indigenous minority group from Southeast Asia. Fleeing persecution, the Hmong have established refugee communities all over the world, and one of the largest is in Merced, Calif. Fadiman's book tells the heartbreaking story of Lia, a Hmong child born in Merced and diagnosed with what her Western doctors called epilepsy but her parents understood only as the-spirit-catches-you-and-you-fall-down. Fadiman didn't change my mind with an argument about the truth of spiritual explanations. Instead, she showed me what happens when you insist the truth is all that matters. The physicians who took my contemptuous approach were least capable of helping their Hmong patients, of treating them as fellow humans. The more they insisted on epilepsy , not spirit-catches-you-and-you-fall-down , the more they alienated Lia's family and, therefore, endangered Lia's life. Advertisement I had always told myself that insisting on the truth is the best way to care for other people. Reading 'Spirit' shattered that illusion. Beliefs are not parts of a car, ready to be replaced when the expert mechanic tells us they are false. Our humanity is woven with what we believe, and true healers must acknowledge that humanity, instead of reducing us to machines. Fadiman also tells the story of a Hmong refugee camp struggling with a rabies outbreak among the dogs. Medical staff began a mass vaccination campaign, but the Hmong refused to bring in their dogs — that is, until an American named Dwight Conquergood came up with the Rabies Parade. He picked characters from Hmong folktales, designed costumes, and soon a tiger and a chicken were marching through the camp, singing and playing instruments, while explaining 'the etiology of rabies through a bullhorn.' The next day, the dog vaccination stations were at capacity. Did Conquergood share the Hmong belief that chickens are endowed with prophetic gifts? Asking that question, I realized, was deeply misguided, at least when it came to the vaccination campaign. If you focus myopically on the truth of people's beliefs, the people disappear. And if you are interested in helping people, that's a real problem. 'I'm not very interested in what is generally called the truth,' explains Sukey, a Merced psychologist who was beloved and trusted by the Hmong community. 'In my opinion, consensual reality is better than facts.' Advertisement At one time, I would have dismissed Sukey's approach as philosophically inconsistent and potentially harmful. Prioritizing 'consensual reality' over facts feels like endorsing a worldview that sees epilepsy as a divine disease and thus one that can't get be treated medically. But treating Lia's disease, I came to see, involved more than understanding the biological reality of epilepsy and prescribing the proper medicine. Lia was a human being, a member of a family, which in turn was part of a community and a culture. Healing her suffering was impossible without taking that broader context into account and treating it with the respect that all humans deserve and require. If what I really care about is medicine that works, then this truth is no less important than the ones they teach in medical textbooks. Fadiman showed me that respect is not synonymous with sharing someone's beliefs. I finished her book uncertain where she stood on Hmong spirituality. But that's exactly the point. I don't know if Fadiman believes in the power of shamanic healing, but I'm certain she respects people who do. Not only that, her respect for the Hmong is completely compatible with her respect for the medical professionals who were trying to save Lia's life — the doctors who were fed up with Lia's parents for refusing to follow their instructions. Respect, for Fadiman, does not depend on the truth of someone's beliefs, but rather the fact of their humanity, and it comes across in every sentence she writes. Advertisement
