Actor Val Kilmer, star of ‘Top Gun’ and ‘Batman Forever’, dies at 65, NYT reports

April 2, 2025 , 04:09 PM

By Will Dunham

(April 2, 2025, REUTERS) – Val Kilmer, who starred in films such as “Top Gun,” “The Doors,” and “Batman Forever” while earning a reputation as a Hollywood bad boy, has died, the New York Times reported. He was 65.

The cause of death was pneumonia, the paper said, citing his daughter Mercedes Kilmer.

The California-born, Juilliard-trained actor was one of Hollywood’s most prominent leading men in the 1990s before numerous 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 criticize 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.”

He made his film debut in the spy spoof “Top Secret!” (1984) before appearing in the goofy comedy “Real Genius” (1985). He then rocketed to fame as Tom Cruise’s co-star in the smash 1986 hit “Top Gun” (1986), playing naval aviator Tom “Iceman” Kazansky.

Kilmer starred in director Ron Howard’s fantasy “Willow” (1988) and married his British co-star Joanne Whalley, with whom he had two children before divorcing.

One of his most challenging roles came in director Oliver Stone’s “The Doors” (1991) in which he played Jim Morrison, the charismatic and ultimately doomed lead singer of the influential rock band The Doors.

To persuade Stone to cast him, Kilmer put together an eight-minute video of himself singing and looking like Morrison at various points in his life. Kilmer’s own singing voice is used in the film.

“The Doors” ushered in the highest-profile years of his career. In the 1993 Western “Tombstone,” he played Old West gunfighter Doc Holliday. He had two commercial successes in 1995, co-starring with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in the crime drama “Heat” and succeeding Michael Keaton as the Caped Crusader in “Batman Forever,” the third installment in the Batman series.

The noisy, bloated and plodding “Batman Forever” was received tepidly by critics, and Kilmer was upstaged by co-stars Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey. Kilmer pulled out of the next Batman movie. Director Joel Schumacher called Kilmer “the most psychologically troubled human being I’ve ever worked with.”

Things only got worse for Kilmer when he clashed with co-star Marlon Brando during the notoriously troubled production of “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” which flopped in 1996.

“There are two things I would never do again in my life,” John Frankenheimer, who directed the movie, said afterward. “I will never climb Mt. Everest and I will never work with Val Kilmer again. There isn’t enough money in the world.”

The Chicago Tribune wrote in 1997 that Kilmer was “a member in good standing of Hollywood’s bad boys club.” He was also nominated multiple times for worst actor in the annual Razzie awards honoring the worst in cinema.

Handsome with light brown hair, Kilmer’s personal life sometimes overshadowed his work. His relationships with various high-profile actresses included singer Cher and model Cindy Crawford.

Kilmer also starred in “The Ghost and the Darkness” (1996) with Michael Douglas, “The Saint” (1997) with Elisabeth Shue, “At First Sight” (1999) with Mira Sorvino, “Red Planet” (2000), “The Salton Sea” (2002), director Stone’s “Alexander” (2004) and “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” (2005) with Robert Downey Jr.

Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014 and underwent radiation and chemotherapy treatments, as well as a tracheostomy that permanently gave him a raspy speaking voice. Post-cancer, his films included a “Top Gun” sequel, “The Snowman” (2017) and “Paydirt” (2020), which also featured his daughter Mercedes.

Born in Los Angeles on Dec. 31, 1959, Kilmer began acting in high school and became the youngest student accepted into the drama division of the famed Juilliard School in New York.

Phillip Noyce, who directed him in “The Saint,” told the Chicago Sun-Times in 1997 that Kilmer “is plagued by a bad image, but most of it is unjustified. The real Val Kilmer is a lamb. And he is the hardest-working actor I’ve ever seen.”

(Reporting by Will Dunham in Washington; Additional reporting by Surbhi Misra in Bengaluru; Editing by Diane Craft and Edwina Gibbs)

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