Val Kilmer, the actor known for his roles in “Top Gun” and “Heat,” died from pneumonia Tuesday night in Los Angeles after having struggled for years with throat cancer that permanently altered his voice.
Kilmer, 65, was first diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014 and recovered before he ultimately underwent painful treatments that included a tracheostomy. His daughter confirmed his death from pneumonia Tuesday to The Associated Press.
Director Michael Mann said Wednesday on Instagram: “While working with Val on ‘Heat,’ I always marveled at the range, the brilliant variability within the powerful current of Val’s possessing and expressing character.
“After so many years of Val battling disease and maintaining his spirit, this is tremendously sad news.”
Despite the brutal toll cancer took, Kilmer said he never felt bad about his health issues.
“I have behaved poorly. I have behaved bravely. I have behaved bizarrely to some. I deny none of this and have no regrets, because I have lost and found parts of myself that I never knew existed,” Kilmer, a longtime smoker, said in “Val,” the 2021 documentary about his career. “And I am blessed.”
Kilmer famously revived his “Iceman” role in “Top Gun: Maverick,” bringing his real-life struggles to screen as a cancer-inflicted commander who eventually dies during the sequel.
“I have no regrets,” Kilmer told the AP in 2021. “I’ve witnessed and experienced miracles.”
Kilmer initially kept his cancer from the public, disclosing it only in 2017 during a Reddit Q&A. He disclosed it after Michael Douglas revealed that both he and Kilmer were fighting throat cancer.
Kilmer once recalled that, early in his cancer battle in 2015, he got horribly sick while he was staying with his former lover and longtime friend Cher.
“One night, I suddenly awoke vomiting blood that covered the bed like a scene out of ‘The Godfather,'” Kilmer wrote in his 2020 memoir, “I’m Your Huckleberry.”
“I prayed immediately then called 911. Then alerted my hostess. Cher stepped in and stepped up.”
Cher paid tribute to Kilmer on Wednesday, calling him “BRILLIANT as Mark Twain” and “BRAVE here during ur sickness.”
In a rare interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” in 2020, Kilmer disclosed that he had to undergo a tracheostomy to help him breathe, an invasive throat procedure that forever altered his distinctive voice.
He also underwent chemotherapy and radiation.
“I feel a lot better than I sound, but I feel wonderful,” he said. “I was diagnosed with throat cancer, which healed very quickly. This is a tracheotomy to help me breathe because the glands in my throat swelled up, as well.”
Kilmer, however, still managed to find humor in such a devastating development.
Asked what he missed about losing his voice, he said on “Good Morning America”: “That I had one! And that I didn’t laugh like a pirate.”
In a 2021 cover story for People magazine, Kilmer declared himself fit and cancer-free.
His son, Jack, 29 at the time, told the magazine: “He has crazy energy. He can’t be stopped. He wants to go out there and be the best that he can be.”
Despite that proclamation, years of cancer treatment can take an awful toll and leave a body unable to fend off disease, said Dr. Robert Alter, division chief of head and neck oncology at Hackensack Meridian’s John Theurer Cancer Center in New Jersey.
“The body’s composition of all these different elements can be slowly torn down. And I think if you’re nutritionally deficient, your body slows down,” Alter told NBC News.
“Your body just gets weaker, and I think your body just cannot fight as much off. We deal with some cancers, and sometimes these infections become overwhelming.”
Alter watched “Top Gun: Maverick” on Wednesday and was moved by Kilmer’s line from the movie “It’s time to let go.”
He said he couldn’t help thinking of patients who have bravely taken on the disease but had more left to give.
“You know, there’s an unfortunate difference between living and existing,” he said. “And I truly believe that when one sort of feels as if the fight cannot be fought anymore, they realize that it’s time to sort of let go.”
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