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.
Photo: AP
The California-born, Juilliard-trained actor was one of Hollywood’s most prominent leading men in the 1990s before numerous spats with directors and costars 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,” Val 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 costar in the smash 1986 hit Top Gun (1986), playing naval aviator Tom “Iceman” Kazansky.
Val Kilmer starred in director Ron Howard’s fantasy Willow (1988) and married his British costar 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, Val 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, costarring 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 Val Kilmer was upstaged by costars Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey. Val Kilmer pulled out of the next Batman movie. Director Joel Schumacher called Val Kilmer “the most psychologically troubled human being I’ve ever worked with.”
Things only got worse for Val Kilmer when he clashed with costar 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 Mount Everest and I will never work with Val Kilmer again. There isn’t enough money in the world.”
The Chicago Tribune in 1997 wrote that Val 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.
The Burmese junta has said that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is “in good health,” a day after her son said he has received little information about the 80-year-old’s condition and fears she could die without him knowing. In an interview in Tokyo earlier this week, Kim Aris said he had not heard from his mother in years and believes she is being held incommunicado in the capital, Naypyidaw. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was detained after a 2021 military coup that ousted her elected civilian government and sparked a civil war. She is serving a
REVENGE: Trump said he had the support of the Syrian government for the strikes, which took place in response to an Islamic State attack on US soldiers last week The US launched large-scale airstrikes on more than 70 targets across Syria, the Pentagon said on Friday, fulfilling US President Donald Trump’s vow to strike back after the killing of two US soldiers. “This is not the beginning of a war — it is a declaration of vengeance,” US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wrote on social media. “Today, we hunted and we killed our enemies. Lots of them. And we will continue.” The US Central Command said that fighter jets, attack helicopters and artillery targeted ISIS infrastructure and weapon sites. “All terrorists who are evil enough to attack Americans are hereby warned
Seven wild Asiatic elephants were killed and a calf was injured when a high-speed passenger train collided with a herd crossing the tracks in India’s northeastern state of Assam early yesterday, local authorities said. The train driver spotted the herd of about 100 elephants and used the emergency brakes, but the train still hit some of the animals, Indian Railways spokesman Kapinjal Kishore Sharma told reporters. Five train coaches and the engine derailed following the impact, but there were no human casualties, Sharma said. Veterinarians carried out autopsies on the dead elephants, which were to be buried later in the day. The accident site
‘NO AMNESTY’: Tens of thousands of people joined the rally against a bill that would slash the former president’s prison term; President Lula has said he would veto the bill Tens of thousands of Brazilians on Sunday demonstrated against a bill that advanced in Congress this week that would reduce the time former president Jair Bolsonaro spends behind bars following his sentence of more than 27 years for attempting a coup. Protests took place in the capital, Brasilia, and in other major cities across the nation, including Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Salvador and Recife. On Copacabana’s boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro, crowds composed of left-wing voters chanted “No amnesty” and “Out with Hugo Motta,” a reference to the speaker of the lower house, which approved the bill on Wednesday last week. It is
RSS