Hollywood star Val Kilmer, known to the general public for playing Iceman in “Top Gun” and Bruce Wayne in “Batman Forever,” died Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was only 65 years old. As revealed by his family, the U.S. actor passed away from pneumonia.
Kilmer made his big-screen debut as a very young man in a Cold War spy-comedy, “Top Secret!” in 1984, in which he played the part of an American singer who was unwittingly involved in an East German plot to reunify the country.
Two years later, he was cast as Tom Cruise’s antagonist in “Top Gun,” a generational film for which a sequel was also made, in 2022. Kilmer’s career finally took off in 1991, when Oliver Stone chose him for his “The Doors,” a biographical film focusing on the life of Jim Morrison, one of the most iconic rock stars of all time, who died at only 27 years old.
The 1990s were a golden period for the Los Angeles-born actor, who took part in such films as “Tombstone,” a western starring Kurt Russell, Sam Elliott and Bill Paxton; “Heat,” with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino; “The Ghost and the Darkness,” with Michael Douglas; and of course “Batman Forever”, in which he played Gotham City’s dark knight, flanked by Nicole Kidman, Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey in the roles of the antagonists.
The film at the time was appreciated more by fans than by critics, but as is often the case, over the years it became a true symbol of the 1990s. Even with the beginning of the new millennium, Kilmer continued to take part in major film productions, playing the role of Philip of Macedon in Oliver Stone’s “Alexander.”
“Most actors recognize there’s something different in Val than meets the eye,” the director once said of him. “What Val has as an actor is something that the really, really great actors have, which is they make everything sound like an improvisation.”
Off the set, by many accounts, Kilmer was a rather complex person, and decidedly reserved. The Hollywood star had married fellow actor Joanne Whalley in 1988, from whom he divorced in 1996. The couple had two children, Mercedes and Jack: it was they who announced Mr. Kilmer’s untimely death on Tuesday.
