https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/movies/val-kilmer-dead.html
"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 and 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 a slapstick Cold War
spy-movie spoof, “Top Secret!” (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 Morrison, the emblem of psychedelic
sensuality, in Oliver Stone’s “The Doors” (1991), and he played the cameo role
of Mentor — an advice-giving Elvis as imagined by the film’s antiheroic
protagonist, played by Christian Slater — in “True Romance” (1993), a violent
drug-chase caper written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Tony Scott.
Mr. Kilmer had top billing (ahead of Sam Shepard) in “Thunderheart” (1992),
playing an unseasoned F.B.I. agent investigating a murder on a South Dakota
Indian reservation, and in “The Saint” (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 “Batman Forever” (1995), doing battle in Gotham City with
Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones) and the Riddler (Jim Carrey), though neither Mr.
Kilmer nor the film were viewed as stellar representatives of the Batman
franchise.
“Serious audiences will be less interested than ever in what’s under Batman’s
cape or cowl,” Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times. “There’s 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.”
But by then another, perhaps more interesting, strain of Mr. Kilmer’s career
had developed. In 1986, Mr. Scott cast him in his first big-budget film, “Top
Gun” (1986), the testosterone-fueled adventure drama about Navy fighter pilots
in training, in which Mr. Kilmer played the cool, cocky rival to the film’s
star, Tom Cruise. It was a role that set a precedent for several of Mr.
Kilmer’s other prominent appearances as a co-star or a member of a starry
ensemble. He reprised it in a brief cameo in the film’s 2022 sequel, “Top Gun:
Maverick.”"
Via Joyce Donahue.
RIP,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
