TMZ reports that Kilmer’s health had seriously deteriorated in his final years, quoting family sources as saying his battle against throat cancer had robbed him of his energy.
Confined to his bed, family say his body eventually shut down despite beating the cancer.
The Top Gun star was very frail at the end, and his death from pneumonia came after a steep decline over the past week, sources told TMZ.
Hospitalised earlier this year, family and friends came to his bedside in the days before his death.
American actor Val Kilmer dies at the age of 65. Photo / Getty Images
In his pomp, Kilmer commanded audiences with roles in Top Gun, Heat, Tombstone, and as Jim Morrison in The Doors, but the former heartthrob has not been seen in public since 2019.
He battled throat cancer after being diagnosed in 2014 and make his last on-screen appearances in the Top Gun sequel and a 2021 documentary appearing physically diminished and with a raspy voice.
‘Magical life’
Born Val Edward Kilmer on New Year’s Eve 1959, he began acting in commercials as a child.
Kilmer was the youngest person ever accepted to the drama department at New York’s fabled Juilliard school, and made his Broadway debut in 1983 alongside Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon.
Having fallen out of favour after the turn of the century, he was mounting a comeback in the 2010s with a successful stage show about Mark Twain that he hoped to turn into a film when he was struck by cancer.
Val, an intimate documentary about Kilmer’s stratospheric rise and later fall in Hollywood, premiered at the Cannes film festival in 2021 and showed him struggling for air after a tracheotomy.
It also hinted at his frustration at signing autographs at conventions which, as he put it, was like “selling his old self.”
Val Kilmer as Iceman in Top Gun.
Kilmer “has the aura of a man who was dealt his cosmic comeuppance and came through it,” US publication Variety wrote of the film. “He fell from stardom, maybe from grace, but he did it his way.”
When he reprised his role as “Iceman” in the long-awaited sequel Top Gun: Maverick, Kilmer’s real-life health issues, and rasp of voice, were written into the character.
“Instead of treating Kilmer - and, indeed, the entire notion of Top Gun - as a throwaway nostalgia object, he’s given a celluloid swan song that’ll stand the test of time,” GQ wrote.
On his website, Kilmer had described himself as leading a “magical life.”
“For more than half a century, I have been honing my art, no matter the medium. Be it literature, movies, poetry, painting, music, or tracking exotic and beautiful wildlife,” he wrote.
According to the New York Times, he is survived by two children, Mercedes and Jack Kilmer.
