American actor Val Kilmer, known for his roles in Top Gun, Batman Forever, and The Doors, has passed away at the age of 65, as reported by The New York Times on Tuesday.
His daughter, Mercedes Kilmer, confirmed that he succumbed to “pneumonia.” She also noted that he had been diagnosed with “throat cancer” in 2014 but later recovered.
Originally a stage actor, Kilmer got his start on the big screen with Cold War spoof “Top Secret!” in 1984.
Two years later, he gained fame as the cocky, if mostly silent aviator Iceman in “Top Gun”, playing a rival to Tom Cruise’s Maverick.
A versatile actor whose career spanned decades, Kilmer got a shot at leading man roles in Oliver Stone’s “The Doors” and took a turn as the masked Gotham vigilante in “Batman Forever”, playing Bruce Wayne after Michael Keaton and before George Clooney.
Kilmer was the youngest person ever accepted to New York’s fabled Juilliard school and longed to make serious films. But he found himself in a series of schlocky blockbusters and expensive flops in the early 2000s.
Chastened by a decade or more of low-budget movies, he was mounting a comeback in the 2010s with a successful stage show about Mark Twain that he hoped to turn into a film, when he was struck by cancer.
“Val”, a documentary about his stratospheric rise and later fall in Hollywood showed him rasping for air, premiered at the Cannes film festival in 2021.
Kilmer recently returned to movie theaters in 2021 with a cameo reprising his role as Iceman in “Top Gun: Maverick”, the long-awaited sequel to the 1986 hit.
AFP
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