There are not many actors who would make Tom Cruise cry in a film. Or could. But Val Kilmer was one. In “Top Gun” 36 years earlier he was quite a fool. You can think that someone whose role name is “Iceman” is also unable to evoke a lot of emotions.
And Dan was now in his office chair, 36 years later. And was not Iceman, but Val Kilmer. He couldn’t speak because he suffered from the consequences of larynx cancer. Put up the face. What Tom Cruise alias “Maverick” says, he replies with short sentences that he taps into a keyboard.
But then Iceman gets up. Because Maverick cannot hold back tears. “The navy needs Maverick,” says Kilmer gently. “The boy needs Maverick. That’s why I fought for you. That’s why you’re still here”. Kilmer talks about the pull son of Maverick, who alienated from him. We all, says Iceman, fight for the next generation. The next scene shows the funeral of Admiral Tom “Iceman” Kazansky.
Val Kilmer was born for other roles
It was the last role of Val Edward Kilmer born on New Year’s Eve 1959 and died yesterday Tuesday (April 1, 2025). And the first cinema roll in eight years. The larynx cancer finally ended its Hollywood career, of which not much remaining. Anyone who saw Kilmer for the first time as a frail Iceman next to the crying Tom Cruise could not believe that Kilmer had actually been famous for other roles,
The filmography of the Californian is curious. She tells the story of a man who was clearly false too often, and, no wonder, so it started with mobbing on the set. His first role was-rarely occurs-a leading role immediately, in 1984 in the ZAZ agent comedy “Top Secret”. A flop that is reinterpreted today as a “cult”.
The Iceman in “Top Gun” in 1986 was flat, but, at least: Tom Cruise had to deal with the thought for the first time that a supporting actor was better received by women. What he had to experience in 1994 in “Interview with a vampire” when he was unstoppable enough to hire Brad Pitt as his love interest.
Then, in 1988, the first hero role. In the last year of the end of the “Sword & Sorcery” trends, he played for director Ron Howard the sword-fighting hero in the fairytale country. Insmert result: more than $ 100 million. No failure. But nobody, Kilmer the least, wanted a second part.
He would have deserved the Oscar
In 1991 the film, about which everyone has been talking since Val Kilmer’s death: Oliver Stones “The Doors”. Kilmer as Jim Morrison. An unbearably chattering music film with permanent supernachment of the biggest Doors hits. But what can you say! Kilmer would have deserved the main actor Oscar.
However, many forget that he was not nominated at all. He was never nominated once of his life. That year he would have had no chance against Robert de Niro (“Cape Fear”) and Anthony Hopkins (“The Silence of the Lambs”).
In Kilmer, Swedish blood flowed, Irish, German – and that of the Cherokee. The scenes with the indigenous people in “The Doors” were important to him. Like those with the Lizards. Kilmer also comes the idea for the scene when Jim Morrison can be satisfied by a groupie in the elevator, his unsuspecting partner Pamela Courson (Meg Ryan) opens the elevator door from the outside, and then simply laughed at her.
From the method acting of “The Doors”, Val Kilmer was considered “difficult”. One can also say that at the time, at 31, he had reached his climax in Hollywood. He was now booked primarily as a very good Wingman. Maybe because then you had less trouble with him. “Tombstone”, “True Romance” (a cameo as Elvis), and as a young ganove Chris in Michael Mann’s “Heat”, where he was unlucky that his understatement met the understatement Robert de Niros; And had too few scenes with Al Pacino, whose five-ignition roaring rifles of a counterpart, as Kilmer masters, could allow them.
“Heat 2” as his legacy
The scene unforgettable when Chris has to say goodbye to his partner (Ashley Judd) forever. From a distance, without physical contact, because they are observed by the cops. If Michael Mann should shoot “Heat 2”, Kilmer’s figure of Chris will always resonate. Because the “Heat 2” on the basis of the novel makes Chris Shiherlis the main character.
This is also Val Kilmer’s legacy.
In “Heat” he was a supporting actor, and in a way, his second largest role after Jim Morrison, that of the Bruce Wayne in “Batman Forever”, was also a wingman role. Kilmer didn’t really know what to do. The rather disgusting Joel-Schumacher strip offered shrill performances by two other outstanding alphamänner, who were at the height of their potency in 1995. Jim Carrey was seen as Riddler after “Die Mask”, and Tommy Lee Jones, after the “fugitive” oscar, as Harvey Two Face.
Presence without having to play
Val Kilmer wanted to be a star and he also had what Quentin Tarantino saw the difference between a “Movie Star” and an “actor”. Presence without having to play. So Kilmer was very good at working instead of having to play. Maybe that made it too difficult for his co-stars to accept him. In any case, the offers subsided. He no longer found the perfect (anti) heroic types after Jim Morrison. He remains the unfinished.
In the past 30 years, a weird role has been lined up in Kilmer’s filmography. John Frankenheimer’s “The island of Dr. Moreau”, he played next to a disinterested Marlon Brando. Another time for Oliver Stone, as an ensemble member, he played the King of Macedonia in “Alexander”. In the animated “Prince of Egypt” he spoke Moses. And God. He could no longer avoid the direct-to-video offers.
For Ed Harris’ “Pollock” he was seen in 2000 as Willem de Kooning. The role of the expressionist painter was important to him. When he fought against larynx cancer, he turned to acting and painting from acting. His topics as artists were Hollywood, fame, language and identity. He loved Basquiat, Warhol or Ed Ruscha. The result was Street Art (created in the villa) and Pop Art. The pictures he shows on his website are good. You don’t have to think of him for an “actor who just paints”.
Val Kilmer had defeated larynx cancer, but was considered to be struck. He was a creditor Christian and distrusted medicine. He now died of pneumonia, leaves two adult children.
In his last Instagram video that appeared five weeks ago, he puts on an expressionistic color-tired Batman rubber mask for fun, says “I’m Ready”, and laughs. His Batman comeback after 30 years.
His last X-Post is only one and a half weeks old. He advertises the sale of a picture he painted. “It has this light of the late night,” he wrote. “Cool tones with a quiet burn. As if the campfire cools down, but they are still wide awake. 12 x 20 inches, plexiglass, signed and ready for hanging.” The link leads into the void, a VAL-KILMER fan, or an art lover.
Kilmer used “Valhalla” (a mixture of “Val” and “Walhalla”) as an artist name. Valhalla comes from Nordic mythology. And denotes the hall of the fallen, a kind of mythical paradise for brave warriors.