Conor Bryce looks back at Val Kilmer’s top performances.
In his own understated way, Val Kilmer was one of cinema’s most transformational talents. With a canny ability to embody characters, Kilmer — who died this month of throat cancer at 65 — refused to be typecast. You simply couldn’t pin him down, couldn’t tie him to any genre (and he tried his hand at most). For every blockbuster turn worthy of his strong-jawed good looks, there’d be an eccentric, scene-stealing supporting performance waiting in the wings. He was in many ways the archetype of the modern leading man — charismatic, multifaceted, and willing to test himself.
Kilmer was, in his earlier years, said to be difficult to work with. However, he could never be accused of phoning it in. He went for it, time and again. Seldom showy, often unique.
Everyone’s got their own favourite Val Kilmer role. Here are eight of his best.
Top Secret! (1984)
This is how you kick off a career. In the best comedy spoof you’ve perhaps never seen, Kilmer throws absolutely everything into his film debut as Nick Rivers, a rock star embroiled in a secret espionage mission. We all know Kilmer can act, can smoulder and can sing (more on that later) — but as a showcase for the comedy chops of a leading man, there are few better. Val is funny. Very funny. Here, with his copious facial expressions, spot-on physical pratfalls and comedic timing, he’s a proto-Jim Carrey. In a parallel world, he could have carved out a fine career in comedy — Val Kilmer: Pet Detective, anyone?
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)
His greatest role of the 2000s. Legendary writer Shane Black’s superb directorial debut, neo-noir caper Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, was criminally overlooked at the time but has since become rightfully regarded as a modern-day classic.
No-nonsense, snappily dressed private investigator “Gay” Perry van Shrike is Kilmer at his droll, deadpan best. He’s a perfect foil to Robert Downey Jr’s fast-talking petty thief Harry Lockhart, and the perfect receptacle for Black’s trademark razor-sharp dialogue. Kilmer’s chemistry with Downey Jr — marking the beginning of his legendary career comeback — is pure magic. The co-stars were thought of as two of the most volatile, difficult actors in Hollywood. Here, they let their audience know they were two of the best.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang also marked one of the only times Kilmer’s work wasn’t overlooked — he picked up a Saturn Award nomination and won the International Press Academy’s Satellite Award for Supporting Actor.
Batman Forever (1995)
Kilmer’s Caped Crusader is often dismissed when compared to the super-popular, hyper-realistic follow-up turn from Christian Bale. But a closer look reveals a charming, complex performance — one that laid a lot of groundwork for what followed in the franchise.
Filling the bat-boots left by a departing Michael Keaton was always going to be a huge task. But while Keaton is probably everyone’s favourite Batman, his Bruce Wayne was almost an afterthought. Kilmer infused his take with a more introspective quality, better capturing the character’s struggle with duality. He also struck a balance between vulnerability and heroism that Bale would pick up and run with.
No mean feat, lest we forget, when he’s enclosed in a schlocky, garish parody that’s more ’60s campy Batman than Dark Knight. Two years later, we got to see what happened when you attempted this kind of movie without an anchoring lead who’s both taking the role seriously and in on the joke — you got Batman & Robin. Yikes.
Willow (1988)
Batman aside, there’s not a lot of traditional leading man fare on Kilmer’s résumé. But in Ron Howard’s family-friendly fantasy adventure Willow, he swashes a fine buckle as Madmartigan, the boastful merc with a mouth — sharp of sword and sharper of tongue. It’s one of his more conventional turns — odd that it’s in a movie containing giant two-headed monsters and people getting magicked into pigs, but Kilmer absolutely brings it. A medieval Han Solo, an unserious Aragorn, he’s the hero, the sidekick, the warrior, the buffoon, the brooding heartthrob and the wisecracking scoundrel. He does it all — and much like with Top Secret!, he could easily have stayed in action hero mode for the rest of his career.
It also marked a pivotal point in his personal life — the man who dated Cher, Cindy Crawford and Angelina Jolie fell for his co-star Joanne Whalley, leading to an eight-year marriage — his one and only — and two children.
Heat (1995)
Not only holding his own, but being memorable in a movie containing De Niro and Pacino’s first shared scene? Few actors could have pulled it off.
The greatest crime story since The Godfather is, of course, the Bobby and Al show. But Kilmer brings an intense vulnerability to Chris Shiherlis, right-hand man of De Niro’s master criminal Neil McCauley, that helps ground us — and allows Pacino to cut loose in one of his wildest, showiest turns as unhinged detective Vincent Hanna. Not bad for an actor some claimed was selfish and arrogant on set. Kilmer perfectly captures the character’s struggle to balance his criminal lifestyle and gambling vices with a desire to be the tender, reliable husband his wife, played by Ashley Judd, needs.
It’s a showcase for his ability to say a lot while doing little — all subtle gestures, facial tics and simmering rage. His closing scene is an absolute heartbreaker, with a sweet smile fading to grim acceptance as he realises his fate. Always dedicated to the role at hand, Kilmer also spent three months learning the skills necessary to make the movie’s infamous shootout one of cinema’s greatest. The sequence ended up being so realistic, it’s since been used by the United States Marines in weapons training, and helped pave the way for a grounded, visceral action style perfected in the likes of Sicario, John Wick and Collateral.
Top Gun (1986)
Tom “Iceman” Kazansky. Cocky. Egotistical. Unflappable. As the foil to Tom Cruise’s hotshot pilot, Iceman was originally conceived as the straightforward, stereotypical bad guy you were supposed to hate. But Val made that impossible. Injecting a cookie-cutter, bleached-blond ’80s villain with complexity and nuance, Kilmer had no business being this likeable in what easily could have been a forgettable role. As it stands — hyperkinetic aerial dogfights be damned — Iceman was a teeth-click away from stealing the whole show.
Quite an accomplishment, considering he was going up against a star on the verge of becoming the household name. As is often the case, Kilmer’s chemistry with his co-star is electric, giving us one of cinema’s greatest frenemy double acts — and one we’d see replicated down through the years. From Johnny and Bodhi in Point Break to Woody and Buzz in Toy Story, all owe Top Gun. And when we’re asked to believe Iceman’s change of heart as he buries the hatchet with Maverick in the closing scenes, we do so without a second thought. That’s down to Val.
Decades later, the ‘legacy sequel’ Top Gun: Maverick gave us the opportunity to grieve Kilmer’s — and Iceman’s — ailing health in a poignant swansong.
The Doors (1991)
Before the music biopic market was flooded with countless entries, there were two movies on everyone’s lips — What’s Love Got to Do with It and The Doors. And much like Angela Bassett’s Oscar-winning performance as Tina Turner, Kilmer absolutely disappears into the role.
He simply becomes Doors frontman Jim Morrison — one of the most complex, mysterious musicians in rock history. Showing the world he wasn’t one to shy away from complete immersion, he spent six months rehearsing the band’s back catalogue every day, alongside hundreds of hours picking the brains of Morrison’s peers. When two of the original band members heard him sing, they couldn’t tell Kilmer and Morrison apart.
Close your eyes and it’s him. Open them and… yes, that’s clearly Val Kilmer in a wig. But it’s not long before you’re thinking that’s what Jim Morrison looked like. The iconic poster of his brooding, pouting face has replaced the real deal in many a fan’s mind — whether they want it to or not. Kilmer is that damn memorable.
Tombstone (1993)
In a classic Simpsons episode, a new character is added to cartoon-within-a-cartoon The Itchy & Scratchy Show to boost flailing ratings. While brainstorming what the hip, cool “cartoon dog with an attitude” should look like, a studio exec demands, “Whenever Poochie’s not on screen, all the other characters should be asking, ‘Where’s Poochie?’” He could easily have been talking about Kilmer’s turn as Doc Holliday.
In Top Gun he threatened to steal the show. In Tombstone he flat-out robs it, winks at the bank clerk, hitches it to his horse’s saddle and gallops off into the sunset. This is Kilmer at his absolute best. He brings an endlessly quotable, exceptional blend of charisma and self-loathing to the dangerous-as-a-rattlesnake, tuberculosis-ravaged legend — elevating Holliday from sidekick to centrepiece.
In doing so, he transforms Tombstone from a decent Western to an unmissable one. It boasts a hugely entertaining recreation of Wyatt Earp and Co’s infamous gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and plenty of beautiful, sweeping shots of the Old West. But no insult to lead Kurt Russell and the rest of the insanely stacked cast — when ’ol Doc isn’t on screen, things just aren’t as good. You just can’t look away when Holliday swaggers on screen — all wry humour and coughing fits, the deadliest pistol in the room even as his disease wastes him away. It’s a performance so legendary, YouTube “best of Tombstone” compilations are often just Kilmer’s entire screen time. And notably, this was Val’s favourite too.
