Latest news with #TheGhostandtheDarkness
TimesLIVE
23-04-2025
- Sport
- TimesLIVE
Lions see no evil, hear no evil amid noise over Van Rooyen's suitability
In the 1996 movie The Ghost and the Darkness thorn bush barriers are erected to keep man-eating lions out of a camp. The under siege Lions at Ellis Park are doing it the other way by trying to insulate themselves from the increasing din that has erupted about head coach Ivan van Rooyen's suitability for the job. Mathematically it is still possible but the Lions are for all intents and purposes out of top eight reach for the fourth straight season in the United Rugby Championship (URC). Van Rooyen has presided over the Lions for their full existence in that competition and they are yet to reach a quarterfinal. Yet, from within, and this is understandable due to contractual obligations, there is a preference for see no evil, hear no evil. Surely though, the outside voices of discontent must have reached the ears of those inside the cavernous Ellis Park Stadium?
Gulf Today
09-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Gulf Today
Very sad
I was very sorry to learn about the sad death of Hollywood actor Val Kilmer. He was a brilliant actor, who portrayed a wide range of roles with great élan. He was excellent in the movie, 'The Ghost and the Darkness,' in which he has to hunt two man-eating lions in Kenya, Africa, along with Michael Douglas. It was a chilling movie. I could not sleep for a few nights after watching the movie. I also wondered how he had the daring to make the movie, with the lions constantly chasing him. He acted in many other movies, including the 'Top Gun' series. He was always brilliant. Sad to see him go, so soon at the age of 65. Rajendra Aneja, Mumbai, India
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Val Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer over a decade ago, but it wasn't his cause of death
Val Kilmer's cause of death was pneumonia, according to his daughter. Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer a decade ago and underwent a tracheotomy. The tracheotomy affected his ability to speak. The procedure can also increase the risk of pneumonia. Val Kilmer died of pneumonia on Tuesday, but his history of throat cancer — an umbrella term for cancers of the throat, voice box, head, and neck — may have been a contributing factor. Though the "Top Gun" star was diagnosed with the disease a decade ago, he initially kept it a secret. The actor, who was 65 at the time of his death, only began to speak publicly about his condition a few years later, and released a 2021 documentary "Val," in which he opened up about his health struggles, including losing his voice as a result of a tracheotomy. He used a voice box to speak in the film. Kilmer's daughter, who confirmed his death, didn't clarify whether his pneumonia was related to his cancer. However, undergoing a tracheotomy can increase the risk of pneumonia long-term according to the American Thoracic Society. The "Batman Forever" star received his diagnosis in 2014, but publicly disclosed it for the first time in a 2017 Reddit Ask Me Anything post. He had previously denied that he had cancer in 2016 after his "The Ghost and the Darkness" costar Michael Douglas revealed his health status during a press event. He later detailed his ongoing health struggle in a 2020 memoir called "I'm Your Huckleberry." Kilmer confirmed he was cancer-free in a 2021 People magazine cover story promoting his documentary; in the doc, the actor said he'd been cancer-free for about four years. Kilmer's vocal cords were damaged after a tracheotomy, and he permanently lost his voice. During a tracheotomy, also called a tracheostomy, a hole is made in the front of the neck and a tube is inserted into the windpipe. The procedure is performed on people with a problem that prevents air and oxygen from reaching the lungs. This can include throat injury (such as from radiation or trauma), or a physical blockage in the windpipe (such as from cancer). The tracheotomy tube is secured to the neck with tape, and the patient breathes through it rather than through their nose and mouth. It's common to have difficulty speaking after a tracheotomy, but not everyone loses the ability to speak permanently. However, the problem can persist in up to 25% of patients who require long-term mechanical ventilation, according to The National Tracheostomy Safety Project. In a 2020 New York Times profile of Kilmer, the actor said his cancer treatments had included surgery, followed by chemotherapy and radiation. He suggested that damage from the chemo and radiation had resulted in his need for a tracheotomy tube. He also said that when he tried to remove the tube, he'd experience complications like a cough, cold, or fever. Read the original article on Business Insider
The Guardian
02-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Val Kilmer obituary
Temperamental on-set behaviour by successful actors is common, but rarely made public. So it takes a particular type of performer, or one with poor PR defences, to become notorious for tantrums or capriciousness. The actor Val Kilmer, who has died aged 65 after suffering from pneumonia, was one such case. He starred in several box-office hits, including Top Gun (1986), and played roles as distinctive as Jim Morrison in The Doors (1991) and the ghost of Elvis Presley in True Romance (1993). He also got a fleeting taste of superstardom when he took the lead in Batman Forever (1995). Yet still he was better known in Hollywood for being difficult to work with than for any of his performances. Michael Douglas berated him for unprofessionalism on the set of The Ghost and the Darkness (1997), while John Frankenheimer, who worked with him on the ill-fated 1996 remake of The Island of Dr Moreau, said: 'Even if I was directing a film called The Life of Val Kilmer, I wouldn't have that prick in it.' On the other hand, Michael Mann, who directed him in Heat (1995), and Oliver Stone, who wrote and directed The Doors, spoke admiringly of him as a collaborator. At its best, Kilmer's acting combined playfulness and intensity. He also had a flair for comedy that was under-used except in a few instances. One of these was his film debut, Top Secret! (1984), a scattershot spoof of second world war movies in which he demonstrated straight-faced comic aplomb amid a myriad wacky sight gags from the team behind Airplane! Even here, though, his approach was one of the utmost seriousness. The film-makers Jerry and David Zucker and Jim Abrahams advised him to loosen up and enjoy himself. 'The boys always wanted me to have more fun,' recalled Kilmer, 'but I wanted to be good and I took it all way too seriously.' It was ever thus. As an adolescent, he had reportedly walked off the set of a hamburger commercial when he found himself unable to manufacture sufficient enthusiasm for the product in hand. Kilmer, whose ancestry was Cherokee-German-Irish-Swedish, was born in Los Angeles, to Gladys (nee Ekstadt) and Eugene. His father was said to have amassed a $100m fortune from supplying parts to the aircraft and aerospace industries (though his real-estate business filed for bankruptcy in 1991). Kilmer's parents, who raised him as a Christian Scientist, divorced when he was nine. The second of three sons, he was distraught at the death of his younger brother, Wesley, who drowned at the age of 15 after suffering an epileptic fit while swimming. He was educated at Chatsworth high school and the Hollywood Professional school before studying drama at the Juilliard School, New York, where at 17 he was its youngest ever student. It was there that he co-wrote and played the lead in How It All Began, a play about the German terrorist Michael Baumann. The producer Joseph Papp staged it at the Public theatre in New York. Kilmer won acclaim at the Playhouse theatre in 1983 for playing Alan, the rich kid in John Byrne's The Slab Boys, opposite Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon as his working-class tormentors. Frank Rich of the New York Times commended him on the 'fine, firm shading' of his performance. That led directly to him being cast in Top Secret! He starred next in the comedy Real Genius (1985) and played Tom Cruise's rival, Iceman, in Top Gun. Kilmer later called Top Gun 'silly' and 'a horrible celebration of redneckness'. He reprised his role briefly in the 2022 sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, which became his final screen appearance. Though he turned down prestigious directors (Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman) and high-profile films (Blue Velvet, Dirty Dancing), Kilmer stayed in work, though his choices sometimes betrayed an uncertainty about the sort of actor he wanted to be. He starred in the whimsical fantasy adventure Willow (1988), produced by the Star Wars creator George Lucas, and won plaudits for the TV movie Gore Vidal's Billy the Kid (1989). He appeared in the noir thriller Kill Me Again (also 1989) opposite Joanne Whalley, whom he had met on the set of Willow. ('Top British actress elopes to Arizona with Cher's former lover,' reported the Daily Mail, making reference to one of Kilmer's old flames.) Whalley added Kilmer's surname to hers after the couple were married in 1988. They divorced eight years later. In 1991, The Doors gave him the nearest thing he had to a signature part, though he was excellent also as a foppish Doc Holliday in Tombstone (1993). Subsequent years comprised a mixture of missed opportunities and misguided choices, with the occasional high-point such as Heat. Kilmer was but one contributing factor to the disaster that was The Island of Dr Moreau, which went through two directors, the first of whom, Richard Stanley, was said to have later sneaked back on set in disguise. On that movie, Marlon Brando, himself no goody-two-shoes when it came to on-set etiquette, was heard to accuse Kilmer of having confused his talents with the size of his pay cheque. The lead role in a feeble film version of the British television series The Saint (1997) did not improve Kilmer's prospects. After providing the voices of Moses and God in the DreamWorks animation The Prince of Egypt (1998) and starring in the science-fiction thriller Red Planet (2002), he seemed to relinquish his conflicted mainstream ambitions and to prioritise quality instead. He won praise playing the porn star John Holmes in Wonderland (2003) and had a small but significant part in the western The Missing (2003) after he wrote to its director, Ron Howard, apologising for his bad behaviour on the set of their previous film together, Willow. Kilmer was wryly charismatic as the taciturn agent hired to rescue the president's daughter in David Mamet's minimalist thriller Spartan. He was reunited with Stone for the historical epic Alexander (also 2004). Kilmer did the warmest work of his career in the comic thriller Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), in which he played 'Gay' Perry, a private investigator who teams up with a thief-turned-actor (Robert Downey Jr). The character's sexuality had been Kilmer's idea. 'I said, 'We gotta get a little colour in here. We gotta juice it up a little. I think I should be gay. I think I should kiss Robert Downey in the middle of the film. Maybe even earlier. Several times.'' He also observed that, 'Maybe this wasn't my first gay role. Maybe that was Top Gun.' The parts that followed were divided between straight-to-DVD movies and television miniseries, though there were some interesting exceptions: Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009); the action spoof MacGruber (2010), which marked a welcome return to comedy for Kilmer; Coppola's horror film Twixt (2011); and Palo Alto (2013), based on stories by James Franco and also starring Kilmer's son, Jack. A 2021 documentary, Val, found him reflecting on his life and career, as he had done in the previous year's memoir, I'm Your Huckleberry. Theatrical endeavours included a return in 2004 to the role of Moses in The Ten Commandments: The Spectacle Musical, the lead in a West End production of The Postman Always Rings Twice in 2005, and the 2012 one-man show Citizen Twain, which Kilmer wrote and directed, and in which he also played Mark Twain. Late in the day, Kilmer acknowledged that he had been a difficult collaborator. 'I understand how hard it is for directors to direct,' he said in 2005. 'I try to participate more in [the director's] experience than I have in the past. I hope I've done my penance.' He appeared also to have grasped the value of self-deprecation. He played two exaggerated versions of himself – first as a washed-up actor-turned-life coach in The Lotus Community Workshop, Harmony Korine's contribution to the portmanteau film The Fourth Dimension (2012), and then in 2013 on the Ricky Gervais/Stephen Merchant sitcom Life's Too Short, in which he was shown begging for funding for a sequel to Willow and harassing restaurant diners by challenging them to guess his identity while wearing a Batman mask ('Think! Don't you people go to the movies?'). This humorous side spilled over into his exchanges with the press. Asked in 2003 if there was a biblical figure with whom he identified, he replied: 'Other than God?' He is survived by Mercedes and Jack, his two children with Whalley. Val Kilmer, actor, born 31 December 1959; died 1 April 2025
Times of Oman
02-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Times of Oman
Val Kilmer: 'Batman' and 'Doors' actor passes away at 65 Shakeel Sobhan with Reuters, AP, AFP, dpa
Val Kilmer, who starred in films including "Top Gun," "The Doors," and "Batman Forever" passed away at the age of 65, his family said to The New York Times. According to his daughter, Mercedes Kilmer, the cause of death was pneumonia. The man Hollywood loved to hate Born in Los Angeles on Dec. 31, 1959, Kilmer, at age 17, became the youngest student accepted into the drama division of the famed Juilliard School in New York. He made his film debut in the spy spoof "Top Secret!" (1984), and found fame as Iceman in "Top Gun" (1986) before portraying Jim Morrison in "The Doors" (1991) and Batman in "Batman Forever" (1995). His other films include "The Ghost and the Darkness" (1996), "The Saint" (1997), "Red Planet" (2000), "Alexander" (2004) and "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" (2005). A major star in the '90s, his career was impacted by on-set clashes and box office disappointments. In 1996, Entertainment Weekly labeled him "The Man Hollywood Loves to Hate." John Frankenheimer, who directed the actor in the 1996 flop "The Island of once famously said that he would "never work with Val Kilmer again. There isn't enough money in the world." Kilmer, well aware of his reputation, told the Orange County Register newspaper in 2003 — "I believe I'm challenging, not demanding, and I make no apologies for that." Coming back as 'Iceman' In 2014, he was diagnosed with throat cancer, before making a recovery and continuing acting. Coming almost a full circle, Kilmer's final role was a cameo in "Top Gun: Maverick" (2022). Kilmer has also published two books of poetry and was nominated for a Grammy in 2012 for spoken word album for "The Mark of Zorro." He married and divorced actor Joanne Whalley and is survived by their two children, Mercedes and Jack.
