Val Kilmer, star of 'Top Gun' and 'The Doors,' dies at 65

By Will Dunham

(Reuters) -American actor Val Kilmer, who starred in films such as "Top Gun," "The Doors", "Tombstone" and "Batman Forever" while earning a reputation as a Hollywood bad boy for his intensity and temperament, has died at age 65.

The cause of death was pneumonia, the New York Times reported, citing his daughter Mercedes Kilmer. The actor had lived with poor health for years due to throat cancer.

The California-born, Juilliard-trained actor was, during the height of his career, one of Hollywood's most prominent leading men. He made his film debut in the 1984 spy spoof "Top Secret!" which won him legions of fans, and soared to fame as Tom Cruise's rival in the smash 1986 hit "Top Gun", playing naval aviator Tom "Iceman" Kazansky.

Kilmer played the role again alongside Cruise in the successful 2022 sequel "Top Gun: Maverick", though he could barely speak.

Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer and underwent radiation and chemotherapy treatments, as well as a tracheostomy that permanently damaged his voice. He turned to making art.

"It isn't easy to talk and be understood," Kilmer wrote on his website in 2022. "I am improving all the time, but am not able to be out in the world the same way I had become accustomed."

Cruise during an interview on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" in 2023 fondly recalled working again with Kilmer on the "Top Gun" sequel.

"I was crying. I got emotional. He's such a brilliant actor, and I love his work," Cruise said.

One of Kilmer's 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 rock band. He sang The Doors' hits himself in the film.

That role 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".

Michael Mann, who directed Kilmer in "Heat", wrote on Instagram, "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."

DEMANDING REPUTATION

Over the years, spats with directors and co-stars and a series of high-profile flops dented his career. He 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."

"Batman Forever," the third installment in the Batman series in which he succeeded Michael Keaton as the Caped Crusader, was received tepidly by critics in 1995, and Kilmer was upstaged by co-stars Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey. Kilmer pulled out of the next Batman movie. Kilmer then clashed with co-star Marlon Brando during the troubled production of "The Island of Dr. Moreau", which flopped in 1996.

The Chicago Tribune wrote in 1997 that Kilmer was "a member in good standing of Hollywood's bad boys club".

Fellow actor Josh Brolin on Instagram called Kilmer "a smart, challenging, brave, uber-creative firecracker. There's not a lot left of those."

"Val Kilmer's combination of traditional Hollywood glamour boy looks with a complicated, darker and sometimes confronting performance style - I think that's what made him unique. And I think that's what will be his true legacy," said Scott Roxborough, European bureau chief at the Hollywood Reporter.

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. He married his British co-star from the 1988 fantasy "Willow", Joanne Whalley, with whom he had two children before divorcing.

Born in Los Angeles on December 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.

"Val Kilmer was the most talented actor when in his High School, and that talent only grew greater throughout his life," Francis Ford Coppola, who directed him in the 2011 horror film "Twixt", wrote on Instagram.

"He was a wonderful person to work with and a joy to know."

(Reporting by Will Dunham in Washington; Additional reporting by Surbhi Misra in Bengaluru; Marie-Louise Gumuchian in London; Writing by Charlie Devereux; Editing by Diane Craft, Edwina Gibbs, Alexandra Hudson and Alex Richardson)