We lost a good one yesterday as actor Val Kilmer died of pneumonia following a decade-long battle with esophageal cancer. An actor's actor, Kilmer might have been best known for his iconic roles as Jim Morrison in "The Doors" (1991) and Doc Holliday in "Tombstone" (1993).
On X today, actress Jennifer Tilly (who had a minor role in "The Doors") told what happened when Kilmer showed up at director Oliver Stone's "cattle call" audition. "All of a sudden," she posted, "a sixties convertible came screeching up, blaring Doors Music at top volume. And a guy jumped out and strode inside: He had wild hair and he was barefoot, shirtless, and wearing nothing but a pair of tight leather pants."
"We all looked at each other like… Who is this guy? We were more than a little shook by the sheer audacity of his entrance. Well of course it was Val Kilmer and from that minute on, nobody else stood a chance."
He even did his own vocals as Morrison and, if you've ever seen the movie, you know he was good. "The Doors" was about as historically accurate as anything else Stone ever wrote or directed, which is to say, "Not at all." But that doesn't take away from Kilmer's performance.
Kilmer had a reputation for being difficult to work with. "Tombstone" costar Michael Biehn told The Hollywood Reporter in 2019, “People ask me what it’s like to work with Val Kilmer. I don’t know. Never met him. Never shook his hand. I know Doc Holliday, but I don’t know [Kilmer].”
Fans hardly mind the gossip when the performances shine, and Kilmer lit up other classics like "Top Secret" (his first role), "Real Genius," "True Romance," and, of course, both Top Guns.
It doesn't always work, of course. The most notorious example is the 1996 version of "The Island of Doctor Moreau," starring Kilmer and Marlon Brando in the sinister title role. Well, it would have been sinister had it not been for Brando's wild, mumbled mess of a performance. Those two egos did not belong on the same set together.
The Moreau production was one of the most notorious in Hollywood history, with pretty much everything going wrong that could, particularly the battles between Kilmer and Brando. If you'd like to take a deeper dive, The Critical Drinker's "The Most Disastrous Movie Ever Made" overview is 13 minutes well spent.
If Kilmer's post-Moreau career never fully recovered to its '80s and early '90s heights, he still gave moviegoers good reasons to watch with fine roles in "Top Gun: Maverick," "Kill the Irishman," "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans," "Heat," and David Mamet's underappreciated spy thriller, "Spartan."
If you've never seen that last one, it's a treat. "Spartan" is a sleek and hard-hitting flick punctuated by Mamet's snappy dialogue and Kilmer's intense but economical performance. He's Special Forces operative Robert Scott tasked with rescuing the kidnapped daughter of the U.S. president, and Kilmer is unexpectedly restrained for an action role.
Kilmer also had a string of unlikely (but often delightful) recurring or one-off TV appearances on everything from "Robot Chicken" to "Psych."
Even cancer didn't slow him down much. Of his 103 IMDB acting credits since 1984, 12 of them came in the eight years after his 2015 diagnosis, ending with his final role in "Top Gun: Maverick." His return as Adm. Tom "Iceman" Kazansky was particularly moving since Kilmer's real-world cancer was woven into Iceman's character arc.
"There's no normal life, Wyatt," Doc Holliday advised Kurt Russell's Wyatt Earp. "It's just life. Get on with it."
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