In the wake of the sad news of the passing of Val Kilmer at 65 years of age, his “Heat” director, Michael Mann, is sharing a touching tribute to the late versatile actor.
The actor’s family confirmed to the New York Times that Kilmer succumbed to pneumonia and had been previously diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014 but would later recover from it.
“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,” the filmmaker said today of Kilmer on his Instagram account.
Kilmer’s career spanned all sorts of roles and worked with countless filmmakers, being able to jump from drama to comedy to action and everything in between. Easily one of the hardest working actors out there and notoriously turned down an offer for the Ponyboy Curtis role in Francis Ford Coppola‘s “The Outsiders” (Coppola essentially hired a bulk of the young actors working in Hollywood at the time) but was still able to find multiple breakout roles over the years and extremely quotable one-liners.
Some of his projects include playing iconic musician Jim Morrison of The Doors in the Oliver Stone biopic to the second feature film incarnation of Bruce Wayne in his one-and-done turn as Batman in “Batman Forever,” a sword-wielding scoundrel in Lucasfilm‘s fantasy flick “Willow,” an imaginary version of Elvis Presley in Tony Scott‘s “True Romance,” the Zucker Brothers goofball spy comedy “Top Secret!,” which I’m sure prepped him for the Shane Black two-fister “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” with Robert Downey Jr., a remake of “The Saint,” along with standout parts in other action flicks like, “The Ghost In The Darkness,” “Top Gun” (would reprise the Iceman role for “Top Gun: Maverick“) and the wiley smart-mouthed gunslinger Doc Holiday in the macho-Western “Tombstone.”
It can be hard to articulate the impact actors have on our lives, but Kilmer certainly left an impression on those around him (as pointed out by Mann) and a body of work that anyone can be proud of. Val Kilmer was very much our Huckleberry and always will be.
- Christopher Marc
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