Actor Val Kilmer passed away Tuesday night at the age of 65, of pneumonia, following a long battle with cancer. In a film career that spanned nearly 40 years, Kilmer was a leading man and supporting player, appearing in comedies, dramas, superhero movies, Westerns, and more.
He sometimes had a reputation as difficult, but Kilmer’s passing was met with nearly universal love and appreciation. Much like the recently departed Gene Hackman, Kilmer was a performer in which all sorts of people likely remembered him for different parts. Even if, somehow, he was never nominated for an Oscar.
This is far from an exhaustive list, but here are Val Kilmer’s ten best roles, in chronological order:
Top Secret!
After working as a stage actor, Kilmer made his film debut in 1984 in the ZAZ team’s broad comedy, which parodied Elvis Presley’s filmography as well as various other touchstones of the spy genre. Kilmer’s role as Nick Rivers allowed him to sing, dance, and do broad comedy, all of which he would continue to do for the bulk of his career.
Top Gun
In just his third film, Kilmer played the main antagonist, Tom “Iceman” Kazansky, a rival to Tom Cruise’s Maverick in both in the skies and on the beach volleyball court. One of the most iconic films of the 1980s, Top Gun cemented Kilmer as an action star.
The Doors
Kilmer got to sing again in Oliver Stone’s 1991 biopic of the band, in which he played Jim Morrison and showed a magnificent ability to look, sing and hold the stage much like the real Morrison. It’s not the best movie, but one of the great rock star performances.
Tombstone
But the best performance of Kilmer’s career came in 1994, as Doc Holliday in George P. Cosmatos’ Western. Kilmer played Doc, counterintuitively, as a soft-spoken dandy, who spends most of the film dying from tuberculosis. The performance coined the phrase “I’m your huckleberry,” which was later the title of Kilmer’s autobiography.
Heat
In 1995, Kilmer showed up in Michael Mann’s Heat as the menacing criminal Chris Shiherlis. It’s a big movie, populated with some big personalities, but Kilmer’s performance is one of the film’s most memorable elements.
The Salton Sea
D.J. Caruso’s 2002 film is a neo-noir film, starring Kilmer and a noseless Vincent D’Onofrio, that has developed something of a cult following. Arriving in a period when Kilmer was working a lot, but not always in the most worthy projects, The Salton Sea is a hidden gem in his filmography.
Masked and Anonymous
Larry Charles’ film from 2003 was one of the strangest projects of the aughts, starring Bob Dylan as a messiah figure in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, having brief single-scene encounters with a series of familiar faces. One of the most memorable of those in Kilmer, as a character called only “Animal Wrangler,” giving an insane monologue about animals.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
In 2005 came Shane Black’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which featured Kilmer in the first-rate comedic role as private investigator “Gay Perry,” which gave him another chance to play big and broad, while also returning to comedy, and having fantastic chemistry with Robert Downey, Jr.
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Werner Herzog’s unhinged reimaging of Abel Ferrera’s 1992 cop film arrived in 2009 and while it was very much the Nick Cage show, Kilmer did a great job playing the straight man as his partner Detective Stevie Pruit, reacting incredulously when Cage would hallucinate iguanas at a crime scene.
Top Gun Maverick
By the time the sequel to Top Gun was filmed in 2018, cancer had mostly taken away Kilmer’s ability to speak, but he still appeared in the long-awaited film as an older Iceman, battling illness but getting one last scene with Maverick. Thanks to COVID it took Top Gun Maverick until 2022 to be released, but it ended up as Kilmer’s final scene and film―and a hell of a note to go out on.
The list of honorable mentions is long: Real Genius, Willow, True Romance, Batman Forever, The Ghost and the Darkness, The Saint, The Prince of Egypt, Wonderland, Spartan, and MacGruber. And allow me to recommend Val, the career-spanning documentary about Kilmer, from 2021:
