Val Kilmer

Val Kilmer, the celebrated actor known for iconic films like "The Doors," "Tombstone," and "Top Gun," died April 1, 2025 of pneumonia at the age of 65 in Los Angeles.

Kilmer was known as an often-daring actor whose work swung from mainstream appeal to challenging and unusual. He played popular heroes like Batman ("Batman Forever" in 1995), swashbuckling anti-heroes ("Willow," 1988), gangster thugs ("Heat," 1995), and even Elvis Presley ("True Romance," 1993).

"Val Kilmer had me wanting to fly fighter jets, be Batman, rob banks, and hunt lions as a kid. They don't make too many movie stars like him anymore," writer and director Dylan Park-Pettiford said of him on the social media platform X.

Born in 1959, Kilmer grew up in Chatsworth, in California's San Fernando Valley, pursuing acting at a young age. In fact, he became the youngest person at the time in the Juilliard School's Drama Division. He began his career on stage in the early 1980s, with his big break coming in 1984 with the action comedy "Top Secret!," in which he played a rock star – not the last time he'd take on such a role.

In the years that followed, Kilmer had a string of successes that made him one of the most celebrated and diverse actors of his generation. He played the lead in the quirky comedy "Real Genius," in 1986 became an icon of '80s cool when he performed as Iceman alongside Tom Cruise in the smash hit "Top Gun" (a role he briefly reprised more than 35 years later in "Top Gun: Maverick"), and led the George Lucas-produced fantasy adventure movie "Willow" in 1988.

Kilmer's work could often be daring, such as his brash portrayal of rock star Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone's 1991 biopic, "The Doors," for which Kilmer received widespread praise; his take on Elvis in the Quentin Tarantino-penned Tony Scott movie, "True Romance;" and his celebrated turn as western legend Doc Holliday in 1993's "Tombstone."

His bold approach didn't always land him in critically successful movies. He took on the iconic role of Batman and Bruce Wayne in 1995's "Batman Forever," a film that received mixed reviews at the time, but which is more fondly remembered by some fans today. The following year, he starred alongside Marlon Brando in "The Island of Dr. Moreau," an adaptation of the H.G. Wells book of the same name that proved to be a critical and box office disaster. During the same period, however, Kilmer held his own against acting legends Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in Michael Mann's modern crime classic, "Heat."

Other credits include "The Salton Sea," "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," and the aforementioned "Top Gun: Maverick." Kilmer's work slowed down greatly in 2015, when he was diagnosed with throat cancer, which he did not reveal publicly until 2017.

For his part, Kilmer did not consider financial success when he chose roles, telling the Los Angeles Times in 1993, "I have very definitely had a different kind of career than Tom (Cruise). You never know if a job has commercial success written all over it. I just think life's too short to worry about that."

Kilmer won a Satellite Award in 2005 for his work in "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," was nominated for a Grammy in 2012 for Best Spoken Word Album for "The Mark of Zorro," and was nominated for several MTV Movie Awards, among other honors.

Film critic Richard Roeper called Kilmer "a brilliant presence in some of the most enduring films of his generation." X user Shooter MacGavin (named after a character from "Happy Gilmore") said, "For most of us, a little piece of us died with the passing Val Kilmer. An icon that touched our lives in some way through his acting performances. He will be missed greatly," while the Daily Grindhouse called him "one of the most unpredictable and versatile leading men of the past forty years. No two Kilmer performances were alike. He looked like a movie star, but had the heart and soul of the great character actors."

(Image: Fryderyk Gabowicz/picture alliance via Getty Images)