- Title: Val Kilmer was 'one of a kind' - film reporter
- Date: 2nd April 2025
- Summary: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINDOM (FILE - MAY 19, 2022) (REUTERS) ***WARNING: CONTAINS FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY*** ACTOR TOM CRUISE WALKING ONTO STAGE AND JOINING UP WITH CAST NEXT TO FIGHTER JET AT “TOP GUN: MAVERICK” PREMIERE (SCREEN L-R) SCREENWRITER CHRISTOPHER MCQUARRIE, PRODUCER JERRY BRUCKHEIMER AND ACTORS DANNY RAMIREZ, GLEN POWELL, MILES TELLER, CRUISE, JENNIFER CONNELLY, J
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- Keywords: actor iceman the doors tombstone top gun val kilmer
- Location: VARIOUS
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- Country: US
- Topics: Celebrities,Arts/Culture/Entertainment,North America
- Reuters ID: LVA001354102042025RP1
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Val Kilmer's mix of good looks and his, at times, darker performance style made him "one of a kind", a film reporter said on Wednesday (April 2), following news of the U.S. actor's death.
Kilmer, who starred in movies such as "Top Gun," "The Doors," and "Batman Forever" while earning a reputation as a Hollywood bad boy, died of pneumonia, the New York Times reported, citing his daughter Mercedes Kilmer. He was 65.
“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 ,” Scott Roxborough, European bureau chief at The Hollywood Reporter told Reuters. "And I think that's what will be his true legacy."
The California-born, Juilliard-trained Kilmer was one of Hollywood's most prominent leading men in the 1990s before numerous spats with directors and co-stars and a series of flops dented his career. Over the years, Kilmer gained a reputation as temperamental, intense, perfectionistic and sometimes egotistical.
"He obviously annoyed a lot of people and burned a lot of bridges during his career. But I think you can see from some of the outpouring of emotion from so many of the people he did work with... that he really did leave a mark," Roxborough said.
Among those posting tributes to Kilmer on social media have been director Michael Mann and actor Josh Brolin. Mann directed Kilmer in "Heat".
Kilmer rocketed to fame as Tom Cruise's co-star in the smash 1986 hit "Top Gun", playing naval aviator Tom "Iceman" Kazansky.
He returned in a cameo in 2022 sequel "To Gun: Maverick", one of his few appearances after being diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014 and undergoing radiation and chemotherapy treatments, as well as a tracheostomy that permanently gave him a raspy speaking voice.
“Being able to be brought back, reprising his iconic role in very small, very touching and almost completely... without text... I think that was a really wonderful way to pay tribute to Val Kilmer and also in some ways to say goodbye to him as an actor," Roxborough said.
"...It was a sort of a tip of the hat to say... to acknowledge what he has done as a performer and sort of what he's given us as, as film fans.”
Born in Los Angeles on Dec. 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.
He also starred in movies such as fantasy "Willow", "Tombstone" in which he played Old West gunfighter Doc Holliday, "The Ghost and the Darkness" with Michael Douglas, "The Saint" with Elisabeth Shue, "Red Planet", "Alexander" and "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" with Robert Downey Jr.
“While Val Kilmer was incredibly attractive... he brought an unsettling complication to his roles and a darkness. And... these stories of problems on set... these issues outside and inside his performances, I think added sort of a bit of grit, a bit of confusion and problematic confrontation with all the roles that he that he played," Roxborough said.
"That is something that we're missing of these days. I would like to see another Val Kilmer emerge from this generation of younger actors, but I'm not sure there will be. I think in some ways he was he was one of a kind.”
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