Iceman may be an iconic character, but at first, Val Kilmer hated playing him. The
actor may seem to have it all when he's playing a part on the big screen, but the personal story
of Val Kilmer has often been a tragic one. Val Kilmer and his two brothers, one older and
one just a year younger, were raised by their parents together until Val was 9 years old.
Then, in 1968, the Kilmers divorced. Following the split, the three sons went to live with their
father. Val never really got over the divorce - he certainly didn't process the separation
healthily while still in his own youth, at any rate. Despite living with his dad, Val described
becoming distant from his father and at times generally despondent, telling The Telegraph:
"I was quiet. More contemplative than outgoing.
[And] things didn't go well between me and my father for a very long time."
When Kilmer's father passed away in the mid-1990s, he and his older brother, Mark, would end up
clashing badly as they tried to settle their late father's affairs. Perhaps the only good that came
of the divorce was that shortly after his parents separated, Val began to show an active interest
in drama, taking classes perhaps as a way to use acting to escape the challenges of his real life.
According to a 1999 interview while promoting the film At First Sight,
Kilmer noted that his struggles with his art started at a very young age.
The actor didn't land the first part he tried out for ​​— but it wasn't because he was not up to the
job. Instead, Kilmer didn't land the part because he just couldn't bring himself to commit to it.
Kilmer, a noted method actor, said that he walked off the set of a hamburger commercial because he
simply couldn't convince himself to "believe" in the burgers. As Kilmer noted in the interview,
he found that if he didn't believe what his character was saying, he couldn't play the part.
Of course, this was a hamburger commercial, and Val Kilmer was 12 years old at the time.
But with a few years of drama classes already under his belt
and a clear sense of himself as an actor, he just couldn't nail the performance.
As a result, he failed to land the coveted role of the kid in the burger commercial.
When Val Kilmer was just 17 years old, a truly terrible tragedy struck his family. His younger
brother, Wesley, who was 16 years old, died in a shocking accident. Wesley had epilepsy
and happened to experience a seizing fit while he was in a swimming pool. The teenager died
by drowning, leaving Val heartbroken. Though clearly a more major trauma than his parents'
divorce eight years earlier, it was another example of loss in Val Kilmer's young life.
Val managed to pull himself together, though, and that same year,
entered the esteemed drama program at the Juilliard School in New York City, becoming
the youngest person ever accepted into the school at the time. He was still more than half a decade
away from any meaningful success on the stage or the screen, but Val Kilmer was well on his way.
Val Kilmer and actress Joanne Whalley got to know each other and fell in love while working together
on the Ron Howard-helmed action-adventure movie Willow, which came out in 1988. The
pair married and had two children, a daughter named Mercedes and a son named Jack. However,
their love story was not to be long-lived and would end quite badly.
The pair divorced in 1996, and the split did not go well.
Whalley long suspected Kilmer of infidelity, and according to the British tabloid the Daily Mail,
he reportedly was courting world-famous supermodel Cindy Crawford. Kilmer and Crawford did later
have a public relationship for a time, as his marriage to Whalley was falling apart.
Kilmer would later say that part of what doomed the relationship with his
ex-wife was his full commitment to the role of Jim Morrison in Oliver
Stone's The Doors. Kilmer admitted to spending the better part of a year
essentially acting as if he were the troubled rocker, out of a devotion to method acting.
"What is wrong with being a large mammal? A big beast. Like a tank."
Whalley had divorce papers served to Kilmer while he was on the set of The Island Of
Dr. Moreau. That film was directed by John Frankenheimer, one of many in Hollywood who
would later claim he hated working with Kilmer. Frankheimer would later tell the Orlando Sentinel:
"I will never climb Mount Everest, and I will never work with Val Kilmer again.
There isn't enough money in the world."
John Frankenheimer was not the only person who openly hated working with Val Kilmer.
Not by a long shot. In fact, Kilmer managed to develop a reputation as one of the worst
actors to work with in the entire American film industry. In 1996, Entertainment Weekly published
an article with the headline "Val Kilmer Makes Enemies In Hollywood," which included the line:
"Many in Hollywood are loath to work with [Kilmer],
no matter how big the box office payback."
Remember that in 1996, Kilmer had already lit up screens in one of the finest crime thrillers of
the modern era, Heat. He had also played one of the most famous characters of all time,
Batman, in Batman Forever. And, of course, he had been Iceman in the worldwide hit Top Gun.
"You can be my wingman anytime."
Kilmer was still earning multiple millions of dollars, but his reputation for being
difficult on set surely cost him plenty of opportunities. A sad irony is that it's
possible that his interpersonal issues were caused by his efforts to go all-out on any given project.
By fully committing to his craft, it seems, he wasn't able to be a decent person to the people
around him off-screen. In the documentary Val, Kilmer acknowledged his own troubled past, saying:
"I have behaved poorly. I have behaved bravely, bizarrely to some I see myself as a sensitive,
intelligent human being but with the soul of a clown."
Although toned and taut as Iceman in 1986, by the late 2000s Val Kilmer was middle-aged
and quite overweight. And the tabloids and papers took cruel notice. In 2007, the Daily
Mail ran a juvenile and degrading headline that read "Val Kilmer Goes from Batman to Fatman."
Kilmer would start to turn his physical health around a few years later, apparently beginning
to take long walks on the beach near his Malibu, California home and adopting a healthier diet. By
the middle of the next decade, his weight loss efforts had seemingly been a success. But, of
course, many in the media couldn't resist adding subtle barbs from the other end of the spectrum,
so the new slimmer Kilmer was often described in very different but also unflattering terms.
For instance, in December of 2014, the Daily Mail ran another insulting headline that read:
"Gaunt Val Kilmer reveals dramatically shrinking frame while shopping at Levi's in Malibu."
Harsh words about a 55-year-old man who had managed to slim back down to a healthy weight.
Obviously, relationships ending was never really anything new for Val Kilmer,
starting back with his parents splitting up before he was even in middle school.
And then there was the relationship he had with Cher in the 1980s.
She was 13 years his senior and already a world-famous star, while he was just
starting his ascent to fame. Kilmer would say of Cher in his memoir I'm Your Huckleberry,
"Once Cher works her way inside your head and heart,
she never leaves. For her true friends, her steadfast love and loyalty never die."
One very notable breakup was with Val Kilmer's ex-wife and mother of his children,
Joanne Whalley. But the actor described his most painful breakup ever as the end of a brief
relationship with actress Daryl Hannah. The pair became close while working on the film Hard Cash,
and would spend quite a bit of time alone in intimate privacy at his New Mexico property.
In his book, I'm Your Huckleberry, Kilmer would write this about Hannah:
"Lord knows I've suffered heartache. But Daryl was by far the most painful of all.
(Neil Young, I always loved you, but I'm afraid I hate you now.)"
Why did Kilmer reference Neil Young? Well, in 2018, Hannah married the legendary singer.
It's now very public knowledge that Val Kilmer fought off nearly-fatal throat cancer and in the
process forever lost his voice. Kilmer's voice was one of the aspects of him that was so recognizable
and even iconic, not to mention indispensable for roles like Jim Morrison in The Doors.
For several years, however, Kilmer kept his battle with cancer private.
In 2017, however, Kilmer finally publicly admitted that he had fought and beaten cancer,
first revealing it with a rather arcane choice of words used during a Reddit AMA
with fans in which he said he "did have a healing of cancer." That "healing of
cancer" was actually two tracheotomies and chemotherapy that the actor endured over
the course of about two years starting in 2015. That is seriously invasive,
taxing stuff and it speaks to the severity of the cancer Kilmer had to overcome. And in fact,
even as recently as the summer of 2021, the actor described himself as "still recovering."
It's hard to imagine one of the biggest Hollywood stars of the past four decades as feeling lonely.
Val Kilmer is a man who has had relationships with some of the most famous women of our day,
who has worked with the biggest stars on the planet, and who has generally been in the
public spotlight for most of his life. Yet in his book I'm Your Huckleberry, Kilmer writes:
"I am lonely part of every day."
He writes that he has not had a girlfriend in two decades, which has only exacerbated his
loneliness. It also means he faced his cancer battle without a close romantic companion.
Fortunately for Kilmer, it does seem that in those years he managed to develop a closer relationship
with his children, who were instrumental in helping with the creation of the documentary Val.
Val Kilmer became Jim Morrison - his acting was pitch-perfect and he embodied the ill-fated
frontman to a tee. And Kilmer loved working on the movie Heat, saying during a Reddit AMA session:
"Well imagine being able to say, 'Al and Bob' for the rest of your life. Not many people can
do that. Priceless experience. Watching ALL the actors do their thing. Loved every minute of it."
But Batman Forever? Kilmer said he hated working on the film,
describing himself as feeling like a puppet in a bat costume,
according to the Daily Mail. And Kilmer initially hated the role of Iceman in Top Gun, writing in
his memoir that he "felt the script was silly." He even tried to botch his audition, adding,
"I read the lines indifferently and yet,
amazingly, I was told I had the part. I felt more deflated than inflated."
In 2021, the unique documentary Val was released by Amazon Studios. The film's description reads:
"Val Kilmer, one of Hollywood's most mercurial actors has been documenting
his life and craft through film. This raw and wildly original documentary reveals a
life lived to extremes and a heart-filled look at what it means to be an artist."
The film is an amalgamation of private footage and public footage over which the actor speaks
about his life - or at least it sounds that way, given the first-person use of language and the
fact that the voice sounds just like Val Kilmer. But in fact, the person speaking is Kilmer's son,
Jack, since the elder Kilmer's voice was lost to cancer. Jack and his sister, Mercedes,
were instrumental in the production of Val, having helped sort through some 800 hours of footage
their dad had available. Jack and Mercedes also appear prominently in the documentary,
and did a lot to promote the film that celebrated the life and legacy of their famous dad.
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