Biography
Born on December 31, 1959 in Los Angeles, Kilmer was raised by his father, Eugene, an aerospace equipment distributor and real estate developer who made - and lost - a fortune developing a ranch once owned by Roy Rogers, and his mother, Gladys. After attending Chatsworth High School, where he was classmates with Mare Winningham and Kevin Spacey, and the Hollywood Professional School, Kilmer became the youngest student at the time to be allowed entrance into the famed Julliard School. While at Juilliard, he and his classmates wrote and performed "How It All Began," a play that was eventually produced at the New York Shakespeare Festival with Kilmer in the lead. Meanwhile, he landed parts in "Henry IV, Part I" at the NYSF and "As You Like It" for the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, MN. Kilmer soon made his Broadway debut opposite Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon in "The Slab Boys" (1983). The following year, he made his feature debut with a starring role in "Top Secret!" (1984), a spy parody and all-around Hollywood spoof from the goofy minds of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker which later achieved a cult following. Also at the time, Kilmer had a supporting role in "One Too Many" (ABC, 1985), a rather stark "ABC Afterschool Special" that cautioned teens against drunk driving. In the comedy "Real Genius" (1985), he played a brilliant science student at a fictional university who teams up with a freshman (Gabe Jarret) to stop a wayward physics professor (William Atherton) from experimenting on unsuspecting students. Graduating from teen comedies to big studio films, Kilmer kick-started his career by costarring opposite Tom Cruise in one of the biggest movies of any decade, "Top Gun" (1986), playing the cocky F-14 pilot and chief antagonist Tom "Iceman" Kazansky, who butts heads with an equally brash Navy pilot, Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (Cruise), over the coveted Top Gun award. Despite upstaging Cruise with the critics, Kilmer was left behind in the dust professionally, as the other actor rocketed to superstardom. Meanwhile, he stumbled with his next few projects while murmurings that he was a "difficult" actor began to arise. After publishing My Edens After Burns, a collection of poems that included fond remembrances of former companion Michelle Pfeiffer, Kilmer displayed a flair for fantasy heroics as the dwarf-friendly lead in Ron Howard's "Willow" (1988), a lavish but uninvolving fantasy from producer George Lucas that proved to be a commercial disappointment. Kilmer met his future wife Joanne Whalley on the set of "Willow," and following their marriage in February 1988, the pair co-starred together in "Kill Me Again" (1989), director Tom Dahl's post-modern noir about a seedy private detective (Kilmer) hired by a woman (Whalley) to fake her own death in order to escape mobsters from whom she had stolen money. Kilmer next earned considerable attention and plaudits for one of the best performances of the year when he carved out an uncanny portrait of tortured singer Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone's metaphysical, but often muddled biopic, "The Doors" (1991). In order to secure the part, Kilmer videotaped himself singing Door songs. Though Stone was initially unimpressed, former Doors producer Paul Rothchild was struck by Kilmer's ability to mimic Morrison's voice. Stone cast the actor in the pivotal role, which proved in retrospect to be a wise decision: without Kilmer's domineering performance, the film may have performed worse than it did, thanks to an uneven portrayal of the singer and weak supporting performances. Meanwhile, Kilmer's method acting demands - including that everyone call him Jim on set - later prompted Stone to acknowledge that the actor "is passionate about his work; with the wrong approach, you may see a side of him you don't like." Kilmer enjoyed a critical hit as the star of Michael Apted's "Thunderheart" (1992), an engrossing crime drama in which he played a part-Sioux FBI agent who confronts his heritage while investigating a murder on an Oglala Sioux reservation. Part-Cherokee himself, Kilmer delivered a finely tuned performance noted for its subtle intensity. He put his film career back on commercial track with an acclaimed performance as the tubercular gunslinger, Doc Holliday, stealing the thunder from Kurt Russell's strong portrayal of Wyatt Earp in the surprise hit Western, "Tombstone" (1993). After giving a quirky portrayal of Elvis, complete with a rendition of "Heartbreak Hotel," in the Quentin Tarantino-scripted "True Romance" (1993), Kilmer starred in "The Real McCoy" (1993), a crime thriller in which Kim Basinger played a burglar just released from prison and forced to pull one last heist to save her son. Following a one-year absence from the screen, Kilmer was tapped by director Joel Schumacher to succeed the departing Michael Keaton as the Caped Crusader in "Batman Forever" (1995). Pitted against notorious scene stealers Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones as the Joker and Two-Face respectively, Kilmer brought more intensity and humor to arguably the best installment of the franchise, a blockbuster earning over $200 million worldwide. His penchant for casually slipping into different voices and guises led him to choose the role of Simon Templar, "The Saint" (1997). Though hopes for establishing a franchise were high, the ridiculously implausible story doomed Leslie Charteris' debonair detective to inhabit yet another sub-par movie. He voiced Moses in DreamWorks' debut animated feature "The Prince of Egypt" (1998) and he played a blind man romancing Mira Sorvino, whose life is upended when his vision is restored in the mawkish "At First Sight" (1999). Following a brief, but memorable turn as artist Willem DeKooning in director-star Ed Harris' "Pollack" (2000), Kilmer made a career misstep when he starred as an astronaut on Mars in the seemingly commercial, but oxygen-deprived sci-fi vehicle, "Red Planet" (2000). He next starred in "The Salton Sea" (2002), in which he played a crystal meth addict who tries to find his wife's murderer by working with a pair of undercover narcotics cops (Anthony Lapaglia and Doug Hutchison) while trying to save his abused neighbor (Deborah Kara Unger). After a few little seen turns in low-profile projects, Kilmer returned to the limelight with his convincing portrayal of 1970s porn king John Holmes for the true-life crime drama, "Wonderland" (2003). He next received positive reviews as a maverick government agent trying to recover a politico's kidnapped daughter (Kristen Bell) in writer-director David Mamet's crime drama "Spartan" (2004). Kilmer then starred as Moses in a controversial stage version of "The Ten Commandments" (2004), a glossy musical that appeared to many as being a Hollywood parody. The musical was forced to cut back performances for retooling following scathing reviews. Kilmer reunited with Oliver Stone to co-star in the director's epic drama, "Alexander" (2004), an ambitious, but ultimately failed look at the rise to power and eventual fall of conqueror Alexander the Great (Colin Farrell). Amidst the lavish excesses of Stone's production and the endless narration from Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins), Kilmer delivered a convincing portrayal of Alexander's controlling father, King Philip II. Following a brief appearance as an FBI instructor in "Mindhunters" (2005), he was nothing short of brilliant as a homosexual private investigator partnered with none-too-bright petty thief (Robert Downey, Jr.) who is dragged into a murder investigation in "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" (2005), written and directed by Shane Black. Undeniably, the comedic chemistry between Kilmer and fellow reformed bad boy Downey, Jr. was infectious both on screen and off. Following a supporting role in the period crime thriller "10th and Wolf" (2006), he took a supporting role as a government agent who has knowledge of why an ATF agent (Denzel Washington) suddenly has strange memories about the future regarding a cataclysmic explosion in "Déjà Vu" (2006). Over the next few years, Kilmer kept something of a lower profile despite working steadily in small budget films and on television. Following an episode of "Numb3rs" (CBS, 2004-10), he was the voice of KITT in the re-imagining of "Knight Rider" (NBC, 2008), which started as a two-hour television movie and wound up being a short-lived series during the 2008-09 season. Kilmer next had roles in features like the crime thriller "Conspiracy" (2008), the Western "Comanche Moon" (2008) and the prison drama "Felon" (2008). Continuing along with independent films, he co-starred opposite Nicolas Cage and Eva Mendes in "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" (2009), Werner Herzog's remake of Abel Ferrera's crime drama, "Bad Lieutenant" (1992). After a supporting role in "American Cowslip" (2009), an offbeat black comedy about an agoraphobic heroin addict (Ronnie Gene Blevens), he played Dieter von Cunth, sworn enemy to distracted special ops agent, "MacGruber" (2010), played by Will Forte, based on his recurring sketch on "Saturday Night Live" (NBC, 1975- ). More recently, Kilmer was in "Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn" (2015), "Paydirt" (2020), "Val" (2021) and "Top Gun: Maverick" (2022). Val Kilmer died on April 1, 2025 in Los Angeles, CA at the age of 65.
