Val Kilmer, ‘Top Gun,’ ‘Batman Forever’ star, dies at 65
Val Kilmer portrayed larger-than-life characters, such as Jim Morrison, Doc Holliday and Batman, throughout his prolific acting career.
Editor’s note: In 2020, USA TODAY editor Barbara VanDenburgh reported on the emotional and striking revelations from Val Kilmer’s memoir. Kilmer, then 60, had recently starred in the sequel to “Top Gun,” the 1986 film that helped make him a household name. In “Top Gun: Maverick,” released two years after his memoir published and his final film role, Kilmer returned to the screen as Tom “Iceman” Kazansky. Upon news of Kilmer’s death, we are republishing the story.
The long-awaited sequel “Top Gun: Maverick” is full of high-octane action and fist-pumping callbacks to the original 1986 film. But no moment is more moving than Pete “Maverick” Mitchell’s (Tom Cruise) emotional reunion with Tom “Iceman” Kazansky (Val Kilmer).
Kilmer battled throat cancer in the 2010s that required a tracheotomy which still greatly impacts his speaking voice. That didn’t hinder Kilmer from delivering the film’s most emotional performance.
“I was very moved the first time I saw it. Almost 40 years is a long time for a reunion,” Kilmer tells USA TODAY over e-mail of the scene.
Kilmer wrote about how he came to reprise his “Top Gun” role in his memoir “I’m Your Huckleberry,” released in April 2020, revealing that he “begged” for his part.
Here are some of the book’s most interesting revelations:
Val Kilmer, ‘Top Gun,’ ‘Batman Forever’ star, dies at 65
Kilmer begged to be in the ‘Top Gun’ sequel
“I didn’t want the part. I didn’t care about the film. The story didn’t interest me.” That’s Kilmer talking about, of all movies, “Top Gun.” At first he had wanted no part of the 1986 film that was destined to make him a megastar. When he was pressured by his agent to audition for it, he pouted. “I showed up looking the fool, or the goon. I wore oversize gonky Australian shorts in nausea green. I read the lines indifferently. And yet, amazingly, I was told I had the part. I felt more deflated than inflated.”
Decades later, when the sequel starring Tom Cruise was announced, the tables were turned; Kilmer initially wasn’t tapped to reprise his role as Iceman in “Top Gun: Maverick.” But, Kilmer writes, “as the Temptations sang in the heyday of Motown soul, ‘ain’t too proud to beg.’” And his begging worked. “The producers went for it. Cruise went for it. Cruise couldn’t have been cooler. … Tom and I took up where we left off. The reunion felt great.”
Daryl Hannah is his biggest romantic regret
Kilmer writes rapturously of his romances – and there were many. He was “hopelessly in love” with Carly Simon. He shared a romance that was “as whimsical as it was whirlwind” with Ellen Barkin. He fell hard for Cindy Crawford (“I thought I could have died from her love, not because it was difficult but because its delight was simply too much to bear”). He was besotted with Angelina Jolie. (“When people ask me what Angelina Jolie is like, I always say she’s like other women and other superstars, but just more. More gorgeous. More wise. More tragic. More magic.”)
But two women in particular stand out: Cher and Hannah.
Cher was one of Kilmer’s formative romances. They met when he was 21 and she was in her mid-30s, after a mutual friend told him she wanted to meet him. Kilmer was not enthused by the prospect. “I saw Cher as a less-than-fascinating character out of the gossip rags. I was not motivated to meet her, not out of snobbery but simply because I was sure we had nothing in common.”
Val Kilmer tributes: Celebrities remember ‘icon’ ‘Top Gun’ actor
He was wrong. “Cher was funny, hysterically funny. I ended up driving her home on the back of my Harley through the streets of Manhattan. She loved the Harley. We both loved laughing and went on doing so for well over a year.” They’ve remained friends ever since, and Kilmer writes about how their friendship has deepened, calling Cher the “funniest woman I ever met.”
But his most crushing romance was with Hannah when they briefly dated in 2001.
“I knew I would love her with my whole heart forever. That love – invisible, ephemeral, and infinite – has lost none of its strength,” Kilmer writes. When they broke up, he cried every day for half a year.
‘Straight from the heart’: Val Kilmer on the Tom Cruise ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ reunion, that final hug
“It was no great surprise that she wound up marrying Neil Young. It was a matter of one giant attracting another,” Kilmer writes. Hannah began a relationship with the musician in 2014; they were married in 2018. “Neil Young, I always loved you, but I’m afraid I hate you now.”
Cher helped Kilmer through his cancer
When Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2015, Cher was by his side.
Kilmer was staying in Cher’s guesthouse when his cancer scare suddenly turned into a cancer emergency. He had already discovered the lump in his throat and had difficulty breathing. Then, Kilmer writes, “Suddenly I awoke vomiting blood that covered the bed like a scene out of ‘The Godfather.’” They called an ambulance as “blood dripped down my body, my vision blurred, my energy drained.”
Cher got him into the ambulance, and Kilmer woke up in a hospital in Santa Monica, California, where he got a tracheotomy. Later, after Cher made a few calls and got him transferred to UCLA, he would undergo chemotherapy and radiation.
Kilmer says the cancer is gone, but its scars linger. “When I speak now, I sound like Marlon Brando after a couple of bottles of tequila. It isn’t a frog in my throat. More like a buffalo,” he writes. “Speaking, once my joy and lifeblood, has become an hourly struggle. The instrument over which I had complete mastery is now out of my control.”
Kilmer says he was visited by an angel
Kilmer is a devout Christian Scientist, a faith passed down to him by his parents. He invokes his faith throughout the memoir, especially during his battle with cancer. He attributes his healing to God and not to the medical treatments he received. “I went along with the program, mainly to reassure my children I was doing everything ‘humanly’ possible to be healthy,” he writes. “They had been constantly taught by others in their lives to be wary of Christian Science, and although they had each had several extraordinary healings in my opinion, I respected their skepticism and did not wish to increase their fear in any way.”
In the book’s most striking passage, Kilmer says he was visited by an angel.
On a trip to New Mexico when he was 24, Kilmer awoke to an “amorphous black figure.” He writes, “It will ruin the absolute gravity of this moment but in truth this dark angel looked very like Darth Vader, though without the helmet.”
Kilmer says the angel reached into his body and extracted his heart to replace it with a bigger one. “At first I thought it was the Angel of Death before realizing it was the Angel of Life. I wish I could elucidate the experience more than I have already done, but I can’t. It simply happened,” Kilmer writes. “I have nothing else to say about this, except that I am grateful for the new heart. It has served me well. And I’ve only just begun to use it.”
