Val Kilmer

Val Edward Kilmer was born on December 31, 1959, in Los Angeles, California, the second of three sons of Gladys Swanette Kilmer, née Ekstadt, and Eugene Dorris Kilmer, a developer and industrialist. His mother was of Swedish descent, and his father's ancestry included Irish, German, and Cherokee roots. His parents divorced in 1968, and his mother remarried in 1970 to William Bernard Leach. Kilmer was raised with Christian Science beliefs. In 1977, his younger brother Wesley, who had epilepsy, drowned in a hot tub at the age of 16.

Kilmer attended Chatsworth High School, where he was friends with actors Kevin Spacey and Mare Winningham, whom he dated. He became the youngest person at the time to be accepted into the Juilliard School's Drama Division, where he was a member of Group 10. A friendship with Spacey that began in high school ended at Juilliard over a financial matter.

Before establishing himself in film, Kilmer worked as a stage actor. He appeared in a production of Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1 in 1981 at The Public Theater, and returned to that venue in 1992 for John Ford's tragedy 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. His Broadway credit came in 1983, when he appeared in The Slab Boys, John Byrne's working-class play, alongside Kevin Bacon, Sean Penn, and Jackie Earle Haley. That same year, Kilmer declined a role in Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders due to his theater commitments. He later wrote Citizen Twain, a one-man show about Mark Twain, and performed it in a 2012 Los Angeles production.

Also in 1983, Kilmer made his first on-screen acting appearance in an ABC Afterschool Special titled One Too Many, an educational drama about drinking and driving that co-starred Michelle Pfeiffer, though it did not air until 1985. That year he also self-published a poetry collection, My Edens After Burns, which included poems inspired by his time with Pfeiffer. Known second-hand copies of the book have sold for $300 and above.

Kilmer launched his film career with the spy comedy spoof Top Secret! in 1984, in which he played an American rock and roll star and sang all of the character's songs, releasing an album under the character's name, Nick Rivers. He followed that with the 1985 comedy Real Genius, having backpacked through Europe during a hiatus between the two productions. He turned down a role in David Lynch's Blue Velvet before being cast as naval aviator Tom "Iceman" Kazansky in Top Gun alongside Tom Cruise in 1986. The film grossed over $344 million worldwide and established Kilmer as a major star. He went on to portray Madmartigan in the 1988 fantasy film Willow, on the set of which he met his future wife, co-star Joanne Whalley. That same year he starred in the Colorado Shakespeare Festival production of Hamlet. In 1989, he played William H. "Billy the Kid" Bonney in Gore Vidal's Billy the Kid and starred opposite Whalley again in Kill Me Again.

Kilmer's portrayal of Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone's 1991 film The Doors drew significant attention. Before his audition, he memorized the lyrics to all of Morrison's songs and submitted a video of himself performing them. Though Stone was not initially impressed, producer Paul A. Rothchild was struck by the recording and arranged for Kilmer to record in a studio. After being cast, Kilmer spent close to a year dressing like Morrison and frequenting Morrison's former haunts along the Sunset Strip. Members of the Doors stated they had difficulty distinguishing Kilmer's voice from Morrison's on recordings. In 1993, Kilmer played Doc Holliday in the western Tombstone alongside Kurt Russell, practicing a single piece of Chopin piano for months to prepare for a scene in which the character performs it, despite not being a pianist. Batman Forever director Joel Schumacher saw Tombstone and was so impressed with Kilmer's performance that he cast him as Batman and Bruce Wayne in the 1995 film, a role Kilmer accepted without reading the script or knowing who the director was. That same year, Kilmer also starred opposite Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in Heat, as well as in the 3D IMAX film Wings of Courage.

Earlier in his career, Kilmer also appeared in the mystery thriller Thunderheart, the action comedy The Real McCoy, and played Elvis Presley in True Romance, written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Tony Scott. In the early 1990s he also acted in the television films The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Man Who Broke 1,000 Chains.

Kilmer made his final film appearance in Top Gun: Maverick in 2022, reprising his role as Iceman from the original film. Over the course of his career, films in which he appeared grossed more than $3.85 billion worldwide.

In 2015, Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer. A tracheal procedure damaged his vocal cords, leaving him unable to speak easily, and he underwent chemotherapy and two tracheotomies. He published a memoir, I'm Your Huckleberry: A Memoir, in 2020, and a documentary titled Val followed in 2021, both addressing his career and health struggles. Kilmer died of pneumonia on April 1, 2025, at the age of 65.