2 days Ago By Xavi Serra
This Tuesday night Val Kilmer, the actor who played Ice Man in and or Batman in The 65-year-old singer died in Los Angeles from pneumonia. He had already begun battling throat cancer in 2014, a disease he had managed to overcome after a long period of treatment. has reported the news quoting the actor's daughter, Mercedes Kilmer.
During the 80s and 90s, Kilmer became one of the most promising young actors in Hollywood at the time, participating in major productions such as (1986), (1985), (1995) or (1997), films with a very popular vocation that he combined with other more risky ones such as about Jim Morrison directed by Oliver Stone, .(1991), the (1989) or the (1993). With a rock star physique, attractive and magnetic, Kilmer displayed an exceptional charisma that made him one of the most popular actors of his generation: not just an actor, but a full-fledged Hollywood star almost from his first appearance on screen.
Kilmer made his debut in the extraordinary comedy (1984), the parody of the space cinema of a ZAZ (Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker) in full bloom in which the actor gave an exhibition of magnetism and comic talent in the role of the young rock'n'roll singer Nick Rivers. Born in Los Angeles in 1959, Kilmer studied at the famous Juilliard School of Drama and was on the verge of joining the of young Hollywood actors, but turned down a role in the by Francis Ford Coppola. Many years later he would reunite with Coppola in one of the strangest roles of his career, the writer protagonist of the eccentric (2011).
In his early days, Kilmer aimed to be a serious theatrical actor, and even published poetry (dedicated to his girlfriend at the time, Michelle Pfeiffer), but the success of shot his career up, just as Tom Cruise did a year later with , where Kilmer played a supporting role that, however, has ended up being one of his most iconic roles, especially after reprising it in the 2022 sequel , now voiceless due to throat cancer. This performance, imbued with the experience of a career with its ups and downs, was his final role. Roles like that of the rogue adventurer in the epic fantasy or the master of disguises from the film adaptation of the television series They fit him like a glove.
So did Doc Hollyday in the magnificent , one of his most celebrated performances and a favorite of Kilmer himself, who titled his autobiography with his character's most emblematic phrase: . But the two roles that ended up defining this stage of Kilmer, and surely his career, are those of and , two films that, however, fell short of their ambitions. Kilmer prepared for the role of Jim Morrison for over a year; it was, after all, one of those roles that could change his life, all charisma and fire, fragility and self-destruction; but despite Kilmer's successful vocal performance, Stone's self-indulgence doomed the film to irrelevance.
The Case of It wasn't very different: Kilmer seemed a priori a more suitable actor to play a superhero than Michael Keaton, whom he replaced after both Tim Burton's. But Joel Schumacher's arrival to the franchise, with his injection of pop color and eccentricity, shifted the focus to Batman's gallery of enemies (Jim Carrey's Riddler, Tommy Lee Jones's Two-Face or Uma Thurman's Poison Ivy), leaving the luxury of Uma Thurman). So much so that Kilmer declined to participate in the fourth installment, .
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