1 day Ago By Michael Idato
When he decided to pursue a career in showbusiness, actor Val Kilmer enrolled in the Juilliard School, New York’s most prestigious performing arts conservatory. It was a telling choice. Among the school’s alumni are composers Henry Mancini and John Williams, actors Christine Baranski and Christopher Reeve, and comedian Robin Williams.
An actor making that choice is aiming for the top. It explains, to some extent, why a newly graduated Kilmer was then offered a role in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 literary film adaptation The Outsiders , and, three years later, a role in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet , the cinematic masterwork which paved the artistic road to a little town called Twin Peaks . But there is a stunning footnote: Kilmer turned both down.
That choice, more than any other in a complex and varied career, reveals much about the man, and about the way Hollywood perceived him. Some will remember him for action movies and some troubled headlines. He was Batman.
He was Doc Holliday. And he was Jim Morrison from The Doors. In fact, he was a rare genuine talent in a town largely populated by imposters.
Kilmer would, of course, go on to play Lieutenant Tom “Iceman” Kazansky in Top Gun , and billionaire philanthropist (and costumed superhero) Bruce Wayne, alias Batman, in Batman Forever . Those choices could have consigned Kilmer to a career of superficial parts, big-budget action heroes and once-over-lightly romantic leads. Instead, they were roles that cemented his place in Hollywood’s pantheon of matinée idols.
And in death, his legacy as an actor is almost certain to outsize the scale of his fame. As Tom Cruise and Patrick Swayze sprang from The Outsiders into 1990s lead roles, Kilmer’s path was more that of a dramatic journeyman, landing in everything from Tony Scott and Quentin Tarantino’s True Romance , as Elvis Presley, to John Frankenheimer’s The Island of Dr Moreau , with Marlon Brando. In 1991, however, Oliver Stone cast him in the film which would, visually at least, capture his perfect image perfectly: The Doors , in which Kilmer played Jim Morrison, the lead singer of The Doors.
The role was not just confirmation of Kilmer’s talent as an actor, it was the apotheosis of his physical beauty. If the first act of Kilmer’s life was the Julliard student bucking the system to land roles in Top Gun and The Doors , and the second act was journeyman in The Ghost and the Darkness , The Saint , Tombstone and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang , then the third and final act of his life was more deeply personal. A battle with throat cancer, and procedure on his trachea which left his vocal cords damaged, robbed Kilmer of a career already beset by a reputation for difficulty on set.
He conspicuously clashed with his co-stars, including Brando and Tom Sizemore ( Red Planet ), and seemed to drift at first into the headlines, and then into obscurity. Hollywood, hungry for younger, prettier faces, moved on. In an interview conducted a decade ago, shortly before his illness substantially damaged his voice, Kilmer reflected on the recklessness of his youth.
“I had ideas, insecurities, about myself that I projected onto the movie business, just the sounds coming out of my mouth, it was absurd, absurdly unrealistic,” he said, acknowledging his reputation in the business, adding: “Apparently I have an evil twin.” As a young actor, Kilmer said, he was “very outspoken about very specific things about the art. But it’s a business, and I acted like it wasn’t.
I didn’t appreciate the business that afforded me the lifestyle that I very quickly enjoyed.” The indifference of an industry he was once at the apex of, left him reflective of his choices. “I starred in my first movie, I was the lead in the first play I did professionally, and now that I don’t have that privilege, I wish that I loved more,” he said.
“I want to be a better person. I try to figure that out every day. Of being more grateful.
” Kilmer would, eventually, play two final cards which would cement his legacy: as himself, in the powerful and moving documentary Val , which explored his personal life, and his health journey, and finally Top Gun: Maverick , in which he reprised the role of Tom “Iceman” Kazansky, now an Admiral, in an emotionally devastating scene which left audiences sobbing. “It’s time to let go,” Iceman said to Tom Cruise’s character, Maverick. “Thank you for everything,” Maverick replied.
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