Val Kilmer, best known for playing Bruce Wayne in Batman Forever and Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone‘s The Doors, has died. He was 65.
The cause of death was pneumonia, his daughter confirmed.
Kilmer had been diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014, which he recovered from, she added. In 2021, a documentary titled Val, which followed his life, career, and his health issues, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival to rave reviews.
Kilmer was one of Hollywood’s biggest actors in the 1990s before spats with directors and co-stars and a series of flops dented his career. Over the years, Kilmer gained a reputation as temperamental, intense, perfectionistic and sometimes egotistical.
“When certain people criticise me for being demanding, I think that's a cover for something they didn't do well. I think they're trying to protect themselves,” Kilmer told the Orange County Register newspaper in 2003.
“I believe I'm challenging, not demanding, and I make no apologies for that.”
Born and raised in Los Angeles in 1959, Kilmer started out in theatre and made his film debut in Jim Abrahams’s spy spoof Top Secret! in 1984. He then went on to appear in the science fiction comedy Real Genius the following year.
Kilmer reportedly turned down a role in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet when he was cast as LT Tom “Iceman” Kazansky in the action film Top Gun alongside Tom Cruise, which turned Kilmer into a bona fide star.
“I said no to Robert Altman twice, and David Lynch, although David Lynch I remember, because the second film I turned down was Blue Velvet because it was really graphic and I was just too shy back then,” he said.
Kilmer went on to star in Ron Howard’s fantasy film Willow in 1988, where he met his wife Joanne Whalley, whom he had two children with before they divorced in 1996.
One of Kilmer’s most memorable roles was playing Morrison in Oliver Stone’s The Doors. Kilmer reportedly recorded an eight-minute audition tape to convince Stone to cast him. He then lost weight and spent six months training his singing voice for the film, going on to perform 15 of the 50 songs he rehearsed for the film.
After Michael Keaton dropped out of Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever, Kilmer stepped in. While the film opened to mixed reviews, the film went on to become a box office success, grossing over $336m.
“Everything was different about this job than I’d experienced before. The size of the character and how strange it was that Michael Keaton had decided not to do it – I just said yes, without reading the script,” he told Entertainment Tonight in 1995.
However, the on-set problems Kilmer became known for started to become apparent.
While Schumacher reportedly said he believed “Val Kilmer was the best Batman”, he also said: “Val is the most psychologically troubled human being I've ever worked with. The tools I used working with him – tools of communication, of patience and understanding – were the tools I use on my 5-year-old godson. Val is not just high-strung. I think he needs help.”
Production on 1996’s The Island of Dr Moreau, starring Kilmer and Marlon Brando, and directed by John Frankenheimer, was reportedly extremely rough. Frankenheimer was brought on board a week into filming after the original director was let go, Brando refused to come to set on multiple occasions, leaving the crew in limbo, and Kilmer spent his time on set reportedly bullying cast and crew, later attributing his behavior to being served divorce papers.
Frankenheimer reportedly said: “There are two things I will never ever do in my whole life. The first is that I will never climb Mount Everest. The second is that I will never work with Val Kilmer ever again.”
In a Reddit Q&A Kilmer did in 2017, he tried to explain his reputation for being “difficult to work with”, writing: “I didn't do enough hand holding and flattering and reassuring to the financier. I only cared about the acting and that didn't translate to caring about the film or all that money.
“I like to take risks and this often gave the impression I was willing to risk their money not being returned, which was foolish of me. I understand that now. And sometimes when you are the head of a project and the lead actor is usually the reason a film is being made, unless it's a superstar director, then only fair to make people feel good and happy they are at work. I was often unhappy trying to make pictures better.”
In the 1990s, Kilmer played FBI Agent Ray Levoi in Michael Apted’s Western Thunderheart, had a small role in 1993’s True Romance, where he played Elvis Presley, and in 1995, starred in Heat alongside Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.
“I am in one of the greatest cops and robbers films in film history; it has to be in the top 20. I am on the poster, for goodness sake. What an honour! Priceless experience,” he said on Reddit about his experience working on Heat.
Later, he did voice acting for animated films like The Prince of Egypt and earned a Grammy nomination in 2012 for best-spoken word for audio production of Zorro.
Tributes poured in for the star as soon as the news broke.
Michael Mann said, in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter: “While working with Val on Heat, I always marveled at the range, the brilliant variability within the powerful current of Val’s possessing and expressing character. After so many years of Val battling disease and maintaining his spirit, this is tremendously sad news.”
Actor Josh Brolin wrote on Instagram: “See ya, pal. I’m going to miss you. You were a smart, challenging, brave, uber-creative firecracker. There’s not a lot left of those. I hope to see you up there in the heavens when I eventually get there. Until then, amazing memories, lovely thoughts.”
Francis Ford Coppola, who directed Kilmer on the 2011 horror film Twixt, shared a picture of the two on Instagram and wrote: “Val Kilmer was the most talented actor when in his High School, and that talent only grew greater throughout his life. He was a wonderful person to work with and a joy to know — I will always remember him.”
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