VAL OPENS UP ABOUT HIS LIFE
THE STAR OPENS UP ABOUT HIS CAREER, CANCER AND CHANGING COURSE
Before Val Kilmer was a major movie star, he documented much of his life with a personal video camera. The thousands of hours of footage – featuring home movies, audition tapes, ideas for films and videos shot behind the scenes of some of his biggest films – are the basis of Val, a new documentary exploring the actor’s life, career and recovery from throat cancer. “It’s like I’ve lived my life and it’s in these boxes, but what is part of the profound sadness is that I know it’s incomplete,” says Kilmer, 61, surrounded by countless cartons of video tapes and film reels from his life. “As much as I’ve filmed and as hard as I’ve tried, there’s nothing I can do to make any of it understood.”
Kilmer’s children, daughter Mercedes, 29, and son Jack, 26, co-produced the documentary. Jack also narrates much of the film, lending his voice to his father who now speaks through a tracheostomy tube. After initially keeping his diagnosis private, Kilmer first admitted he had been battling throat cancer for two years in a 2017 interview with The Hollywood Reporter. The actor underwent a tracheotomy and chemotherapy radiation, and also turned to his Christian Science faith and prayed for healing. “I’ve lived a magical life,” Kilmer reflects in a monologue spoken by his son in Val. “I’ve captured quite a bit of it.”
Kilmer started his career on a more serious track before morphing into a hunky movie star of the ’80s and ’90s. At 17, he was the youngest student ever admitted to study drama at New York’s prestigious Juilliard School in 1981. He starred in and wrote plays before finding film work in 1984’s Top Secret! and 1985’s Real Genius. Audiences really took notice of the star in 1986 after his scenestealing role as fighter pilot Iceman opposite Tom Cruise in Top Gun.
As the world fell head over heels for him, Kilmer famously dated Cher before marrying actress Joanne Whalley in 1988. After having their two kids, the pair divorced in 1996. The first five years of the ’90s ushered in a period of professional success for Kilmer, who went on to date Cindy Crawford and Daryl Hannah, with critically acclaimed roles in The Doors, True Romance, Tombstone, Heat and Batman Forever. Soon, however, Kilmer’s career highs were overshadowed by rumours of demanding on-set antics and snarky interviews. “I have behaved poorly. I have behaved bravely, bizarrely, to some,” admits the actor in Val. “I spent decades finding my voice through characters, through movies.”
Despite his setbacks, Kilmer has continued to work. In 2017, he appeared as the title character in the horror film The Super and also had a cameo in the Michael Fassbender film The Snowman. To the delight of fans, he’ll also be seen in the sequel Top Gun: Maverick, which was pushed back to November for release due to the pandemic. “It will be a great film, I promise,” Kilmer told The Hollywood Reporter. “This time around had me laughing with Tom like a high
“I spent decades finding my voice through characters” KILMER
schooler. He’s so funny. I hope he’s saved the world enough to take a decade and re-establish himself as a great comedian as he has it in him.”
Through the documentary, the Kilmer kids hope to share a different side of their father. “I’m so used to people not understanding my dad, and his public image being different than the playful, funny person that we know,” Mercedes told Entertainment Tonight after the movie’s premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in July. “It did really move me and surprise me to see audiences really see him for the first time. That was incredible.”
Kilmer, too, is ready to share his story, his way. “Now that it’s more difficult to speak,” he explains. “I want to tell my story more than ever.”
• By Jennie Noonan