Val Kilmer was as cool as it gets as Maverick’s nemesis turned fellow hero in combat Lt. Tom “Iceman” Kazansky. And he returned for the sequel in a touching cameo, his character by then a four-star general who had Maverick’s rogue back for 30 years.
After the first Top Gun, Kilmer preceded to have one of the premiere acting careers of the 1990s, starring in Willow, The Doors, True Romance, Tombstone, Batman Forever, Heat, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Ghost and the Darkness, The Saint and The Prince of Egypt (as the voice of Moses and God).
Rumors swirled about the state of Kilmer’s health toward the end of the 2010s as he became more elusive and, in April 2020, he confirmed that he had survived throat cancer.
“You may notice I sound like I have a frog in my throat. It’s not. It’s a buffalo,” he wrote online ahead of an appearance on Good Morning America, his first TV interview in 10 years. “Though being healed from cancer, I am slowly and surely regaining my speech. As I haven’t let the adversity stifle my voice as an artist.”
Kilmer shared two children, daughter Mercedes and son Jack, with ex-wife Joanne Whalley, and he opened the door into his private world for the critically acclaimed 2021 documentary Val.
Increasingly frail in his final years, Kilmer died of pneumonia on April 1, 2025, at the age of 65.
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