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.
Val Kilmer was tremendously candid about his life and career, between a revealing 2020 memoir and an intimate 2021 documentary.
The “Tombstone” actor, who died Tuesday at 65, looked back at his personal ups and downs in “Val,” which was culled from hundreds of hours of personal home footage. The documentary was narrated by his son, Jack, after Kilmer lost his natural voice following a yearslong battle with throat cancer that began in 2014.
“Though I healed quickly from the extensive radiation and chemotherapy, what followed has left my voice impaired,” Kilmer said in the documentary. “I’m still recovering, and it’s difficult to talk and be understood.”
In the film, Kilmer revisited some of his most famous roles, including Tom “Iceman” Kazansky in the 1986 hit “Top Gun.” The character was a cocksure rival aviator to Tom Cruise’s Maverick, although Kilmer had little interest in playing him initially.
“Believe it or not, I didn’t want to do ‘Top Gun’ at first,” the actor says in “Val.” “I thought the script was silly and I disliked warmongering in films. But I was under contract with the studio, so I didn’t really have a choice.”
He similarly reflected on his experience portraying the Caped Crusader in 1995’s “Batman Forever,” and how “isolating” it was trying to act in a Batsuit, which limited how much he could move and hear other people.
“After a while, people stop talking to you,” Kilmer recalled in the documentary. “It was a struggle for me to get a performance past the suit. It was frustrating until I realized my performance was just to show up and stand where I was told to.”
In the doc, Kilmer shares that his family was “never the same” after his younger brother, Wesley, drowned in a pool as a teen. He also opened up about his mixed feelings around making appearances at fan conventions in his later years, after a tracheostomy to treat his cancer limited how much he could speak on and off screen. (His last major film appearance was in 2022’s “Top Gun: Maverick.”)
“I don’t look great and I’m basically selling my old self, my old career,” Kilmer says. “For many people, it’s the lowest thing you can do: talk about your old pictures and sell photographs of when you were Batman. But it enables me to meet my fans, and what ends up happening is I feel really grateful rather than humiliated because there’s so many people.”
Toward the end of “Val,” Kilmer took stock of his legacy, saying ultimately that he feels “blessed.”
“I have behaved poorly,” Kilmer said in the documentary. “I have behaved bravely. I have behaved bizarrely to some. I deny none of this and have no regrets because I have lost and found parts of myself that I never knew existed.”
How to watch Val Kilmer doc:
“Val” is now streaming on Prime Video.
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