“Top Gun” Star Val Kilmer dies at 65

Chris Cox

Staff Writer

The versatile actor, Val Kilmer, who portrayed Iceman in “Top Gun,” Batman in “Batman Forever,” and Jim Morrison in “The Doors,” passed away on April 2nd. He was 65 years old. Kilmer passed in the presence of family and friends; his daughter Mercedes Kilmer told The Associated Press. The primary cause of death was pneumonia, although he had previously recovered from throat cancer in 2014.  

At the age of 17, Kilmer became the youngest actor to be accepted to Juilliard School. His “big break” came in 1984, with the spy spoof “Top Secret!” shortly followed by the comedy “Real Genius” a year later, according to NPR. Other comedy movies Kilmer would go on to star in were “MacGruber” and “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.” 

His career peaked in the early 1990s, as he began to make a name for himself. He starred alongside Kurt Russell and Bill Paxton in “Tombstone” (1993), as Elvis’s ghost in “True Romance,” and as a bank-robbing demolition expert in Michael Mann’s 1995 “Heat” alongside Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, NPR said.   

Kilmer would throw himself into his acting roles. Specifically, according to NPR, when he portrayed Doc Holiday in “Tombstone,” he filled his bed with ice to stimulate dying from tuberculosis in the final scene. When he played Morrison, he only wore leather pants, asking castmates and the crew to refer to him as Morrison, and blasted the doors for a year. This unmatched personality, of embodying his roles, made Kilmer difficult to work with, which he would go on to agree with later in his life.  

One of his most iconic roles almost never happened, if not for Tony Scott promising his role would improve from the initial script. According to NPR, that role was the hotshot pilot Tom “Iceman” Kazansky opposite Tom Cruise’s Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in the 1986 blockbuster film “Top Gun.” Kilmer would reprise his role in the 2022 sequel, “Top Gun: Maverick.”  

These were just a couple of the highlights from Kilmer’s storied acting career. Along with acting, Kilmer published two books of poetry, “My Edens After Burns” and “The Mark of Zorro,” which “was nominated for a spoken word album Grammy in 2012,” claims NPR. 

In addition to being an author, Kilmer was a visual artist and lifelong Christian Scientist. Val Kilmer is survived by his two children, Mercedes and Jack.