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Val Kilmer, Film Star Who Played Batman and Jim Morrison, Dies at 65
A wide-ranging leading man who earned critical praise, he was known to be charismatic but unpredictable. At one point he dropped out of Hollywood for a decade.
By Bruce Weber
- Published April 1, 2025Updated April 2, 2025, 4:20 p.m. ET
Val Kilmer, a homegrown Hollywood actor who tasted leading-man stardom as Jim Morrison and Batman, but whose protean gifts and elusive personality also made him a high-profile supporting player, died on Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 65.
The cause was pneumonia, said his daughter, Mercedes Kilmer. Mr. Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014 but later recovered, she said.
Tall and handsome in a rock-star sort of way, Mr. Kilmer was in fact cast as a rocker a handful of times early in his career, when he seemed destined for blockbuster success. He made his feature debut in the slapstick Cold War spy-movie spoof âTop Secret!â (1984), in which he starred as a crowd-pleasing, hip-shaking American singer in Berlin unwittingly involved in an East German plot to reunify the country.
He gave a vividly stylized performance as Jim Morrison, the frontman for the rock group the Doors and an emblem of psychedelic sensuality, in Oliver Stoneâs âThe Doorsâ (1991), and he played the cameo role of Mentor â an advice-giving Elvis as imagined by the filmâs antiheroic protagonist, played by Christian Slater â in âTrue Romanceâ (1993), a violent drug-chase caper written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Tony Scott.
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Mr. Kilmer had top billing, ahead of Sam Shepard, in âThunderheartâ (1992), in which he played an unseasoned F.B.I. agent investigating a murder on a South Dakota Indian reservation, and in âThe Saintâ (1997), a thriller about a debonair, resourceful thief playing cat-and-mouse with the Russian mob. Most famously, perhaps, between Michael Keaton and George Clooney, he inhabited the title role (and the batsuit) in âBatman Foreverâ (1995), doing battle in Gotham City with Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones) and the Riddler (Jim Carrey), though neither Mr. Kilmer nor the film was viewed as stellar representatives of the Batman franchise.
âSerious audiences will be less interested than ever in whatâs under Batmanâs cape or cowl,â Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times. âThereâs not much to contemplate here beyond the spectacle of gimmicky props and the kitsch of good actors (all of whom have lately done better work elsewhere) dressed for a red-hot Halloween.â
But by then another, perhaps more interesting, strain of Mr. Kilmerâs career had developed. Mr. Scott cast him in his first big-budget film, âTop Gunâ (1986), the testosterone-fueled adventure drama about Navy fighter pilots in training, in which Mr. Kilmer played the cool, cocky rival to the filmâs star, Tom Cruise. It was a role that set a precedent for several of Mr. Kilmerâs other prominent appearances as a co-star or a member of a starry ensemble. (He reprised it in a brief cameo in the filmâs 2022 sequel, âTop Gun: Maverick,â also starring Mr. Cruise.)
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Mr. Kilmer played the urbane, profligate gunslinger Doc Holliday in âTombstoneâ (1993), a bloody western, alongside Kurt Russell, Sam Elliott and Bill Paxton as Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan Earp. He was part of a robbery gang in âHeatâ (1995), a contemporary urban âHigh Noonâ-ish tale that was a vehicle for Robert De Niro as the mastermind of a heist and Al Pacino as the cop who chases him down. He was a co-star, billed beneath Michael Douglas, in âThe Ghost and the Darknessâ (1996), a period piece about lion hunting set in late 19th-century Africa. In âPollockâ (2000), starring Ed Harris as the painter Jackson Pollock, he was a fellow artist, Willem de Kooning. And he played Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great (Colin Farrell), in Oliver Stoneâs grandiose epic âAlexanderâ (2004).
Throughout his career Mr. Kilmer often left an impression â with movie viewers as well as moviemakers â of unpredictability.
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âMost actors recognize thereâs something different in Val than meets the eye,â Mr. Stone said in a 2007 interview for a segment of the television series âBiography.â The playwright and screenwriter David Mamet, who directed Mr. Kilmer in the political thriller âSpartanâ (2004), noted, âWhat Val has as an actor is something that the really, really great actors have, which is they make everything sound like an improvisation.â
On the screen, he was both charismatic and curiosity-piquing, an actor who didnât let his characters give emotional clues away easily. Off the screen, he had his share of disagreements, especially early in his career, when he earned a reputation for surliness and self-involvement. A 1996 cover article about him in Entertainment Weekly was titled âThe Man Hollywood Loves to Hate.â
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âHe offended people by being hard to understand,â said Mr. Stone, one of several people who said over the years that Mr. Kilmer had turned them off before turning them back on again. Robert Downey Jr., who co-starred with Mr. Kilmer in the wry 2005 murder mystery âKiss Kiss Bang Bang,â acknowledged in the âBiographyâ segment that he couldnât stand him when they first met, though they eventually became great friends.
âIâm sure this canât be news to you that heâs chronically eccentric,â Mr. Downey said.
Val Edward Kilmer was born in Los Angeles on Dec. 31, 1959, and grew up in the Chatsworth neighborhood in the far northwest part of the city, where his neighbors were Roy Rogers and Dale Evans and his high school classmates were Kevin Spacey and Mare Winningham. His father, Eugene, a real estate developer, and his mother, Gladys (Ekstadt) Kilmer, divorced when Val was 9. A younger brother, Wesley, drowned in a swimming pool in 1977, an event that haunted Mr. Kilmer for years.
His memories of that loss were at the center of his performance in âThe Salton Seaâ (2002), about a man driven by guilt who seeks redemption after witnessing the murder of his wife and not being able to save her. âThere are several points in the movie where the guy just canât go on,â Mr. Kilmer said in an interview with The Times in 2002. âI didnât really get back to earth until about two or three years after my brother died.â
He applied to the Juilliard School in New York and at 17 became one of the youngest students ever admitted to the acting program there. At Juilliard, he and several classmates wrote and performed âHow It All Began,â adapted from the autobiography of the West German urban guerrilla Michael Baumann. In 1981, after Mr. Kilmer graduated, he appeared in a professional production of the play at the Public Theater.
He made his Broadway debut in 1983 in âThe Slab Boys,â a drama by John Byrne about young workers in a Scottish carpet factory, with a cast that included Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon. He later played Hamlet at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival in Boulder in 1988 and, in 1992, the male lead, Giovanni, opposite Jeanne Tripplehorn, in a Public Theater production of the lurid Jacobean tragedy ââTis Pity Sheâs a Whore,â directed by JoAnne Akalaitis.
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Mr. Kilmerâs marriage to the actress Joanne Whalley, whom he had met on the set of Ron Howardâs childrenâs fantasy film âWillowâ (1988), ended in divorce. In addition to their daughter, his survivors include their son, Jack. Mr. Kilmer lived on a ranch near Santa Fe for many years and once pondered a run for governor of New Mexico.
His other significant film credits include âThe Island of Dr. Moreauâ (1996), a horror movie based on an early novel by H.G. Wells; âWonderlandâ (2003), a murder story based on a true crime in which he played the pornography star John Holmes; and âTwixtâ (2011), directed by Francis Ford Coppola, about a horror writer whose book tour takes him to a creepy town haunted by a murder of children years earlier.
Like his fellow actor Hal Holbrook, Mr. Kilmer had a longstanding fascination with Mark Twain, and he spent many years researching and writing a one-man play, âCitizen Twain,â which he began performing around the country in 2010. (Mr. Kilmer, who had trouble managing his weight, gave his interest in Twain credit for helping him slim down at last.)
He also appeared as Twain in a 2019 film version of that play, âCinema Twain,â and in a 2014 film adaptation of Twainâs work, âTom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.â He had once planned to direct and star in a film he wrote about Twain and Mary Baker Eddy, the woman who founded Christian Science and whom Twain repeatedly criticized. Mr. Kilmer was a Christian Scientist.
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In 2021, he was the subject of âVal,â a documentary based on decades of archival footage. His children were associate producers, and Jack Kilmer was the narrator. The film won several awards, including a Critics Choice Award for best historical or biographical documentary.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in 2012, Mr. Kilmer spoke about his absence from mainstream Hollywood for a decade or more and acknowledged that his career arc had been unusual. He had other interests, he said; he wanted to hang out with his kids.
âI donât have any regrets,â he said. He added: âItâs an adage but itâs kind of true: Once youâre a star, youâre always a star; itâs just what level?â
Mike Ives contributed reporting.
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What Happened to Val Kilmer? Heâs Just Starting to Figure It Out.
A correction was made on
April 2, 2025
:
An earlier version of a picture caption with this obituary misidentified the actor shown with Mr. Kilmer and Tom Cruise in a scene from the movie âTop Gun.â He is Whip Hubley, not Rick Rossovich.
When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at [email protected].Learn more
Bruce Weber retired in 2016 after 27 years at The Times. During the last eight he was an obituary writer. He is at work on a biography of the novelist E.L. Doctorow. More about Bruce Weber
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