Actor Val Kilmer died April 1, at the age of 65. News of his passing was confirmed to by his daughter, Mercedes.
A leading man known for his enigmatic presence, Mr. Kilmer got his start on the stage. Born and raised in California, he was the then-youngest person to be accepted to Juilliard's Drama Division, entering Group 10 at just 17 years old. In the early 1980s, he devoted much of his focus to theatre, turning down increasingly high-profile screen offers to instead hone his skills of live performance: Famously, he turned down a role in Francis Ford Coppola's screen adaptation of The Outsiders to instead honor a previous Shakespearean commitment.
In 1983, Mr. Kilmer made his Broadway debut in The Slab Boys with Kevin Bacon, Sean Penn, and Jackie Earle Haley. The play, set in mid-century Scotland, failed to catch on with audiences or critics, running for just 19 previews and 48 performances. The Broadway stumble proved to set the stage for Mr. Kilmer's big break.
His schedule unexpectedly freed from the eight-show-a-week theatrical demand, he was able to star in the spy movie spoof Top Secret!, having been hand-picked to audition by the film's directors after seeing one of the few performances of The Slab Boys. The comedy kicked off an extensive film career for Mr. Kilmer, with memorable appearances in Top Gun, Batman Forever, Willow, True Romance, Tombstone, Heat, and many, many more.
For a time, Mr. Kilmer was considered one of the most interesting leading men in Tinseltown, but his impossible-to-pin-down nature and idiosyncratic methods of working occasionally caused conflict with those who sought to manage him. Those traits were mirrored in one of Mr. Kilmer's most unforgettable performances: as Jim Morrison, the controversial lead singer of rock band The Doors.
Mr. Kilmer starred in director Oliver Stone's long-awaited biopic of the band, immersing himself in Morrison's lifestyle for close to a year before production began. Mr. Kilmer sang as Mr. Morrison in The Doors, rather than utilizing the practice of dubbing, and his performance was widely praised by both the general public and those who had been personally close to Morrison, including original The Doors producer Paul A. Rothchild and guitarist Robby Krieger. Released in 1991, many film aficionados point to Mr. Kilmer's powerhouse performance as a key marker in the cultural rise of musical biopics.
While Mr. Kilmer's focus remained on films for the majority of his career, he did return to the theatre occasionally. In 1988, he starred in Hamlet at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, and he returned Off-Broadway in 1992, starring in The Public Theater's production of 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. In Los Angeles, he played Moses in The Ten Commandments: The Musical in 2004, and in London he starred in a 2005 production of The Postman Always Rings Twice. He toured a solo show centering on Mark Twain and the founder of the Christian Science church, Mary Baker Eddie, Citizen Twain, in the final decades of his life.
Mr. Kilmer was a lifelong Christian Scientist, and when he was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2015, he resisted the formal identification of the diagnosis. He did, however, undergo chemotherapy in spite of it traditionally being against the tenants of Christian Science. He underwent a significant surgical procedure on his trachea that reduced his trademark voice to a rasp, requiring him to use an electric voice box to fully speak, but he eventually entered full remission from the cancer. In 2022, he appeared in the sequel to Top Gun, Top Gun: Maverick, with the help of digital alteration to provide vocal clarity.
After eight years in remission from cancer, Mr. Kilmer died April 1 of pneumonia. He is survived by his daughter Mercedes Kilmer, his son Jack Kilmer, and his ex-wife Joanne Whalley.
