From action to comedy to westerns: Versatile Val Kilmer could turn his hand to anything
As comfortable in a riotously silly comedy as he was flying a fighter plane or playing a rock god, here’s some of Val Kilmer’s finest moments on screen.
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From the very start of his career, Val Kilmer proved to be one of the most versatile actors of his generation. Though he had his share of huge hits – and massive misses – he shone for four decades in dramas, comedies, westerns, action thrillers and biopics.
TOP SECRET (1984)
Kilmer’s debut role anchors a comedy classic that is just as funny today as it was more than 40 years ago. With killer comic timing and completely straight face – and doing his own singing – he plays Elvis-adjacent crooner Nick Rivers, who finds himself embroiled in a spy plot in East Germany. The jokes per minute ratio from the team that made Flying High is off the chart, and Kilmer lands more than his fair share.
TOP GUN (1986)
The impossibly good-looking Kilmer cemented his heart-throb credentials as the cocky but brilliant fighter pilot Tom “Iceman” Kazansky, Tom Cruise’s bitter rival in the in the testosterone-fuelled hit action thriller that helped define the decade’s cinema. Clearly ill and unable to speak due to his throat cancer, he returned to the role for a genuinely touching cameo in the 2022 – now promoted to Admiral – in what would prove to be his final screen role.
THE DOORS (1991)
Oliver Stone’s biopic of the seminal ‘60s band was a bit of a hot mess, but there was no denying Kilmer’s performance as front man Jim Morrison. He utterly disappeared into the skin of the late Lizard King, connecting with his sexual magnetism and mystical mysteriousness and also contributed to the vocals to the point that the other members of The Doors reportedly couldn’t tell them from Morrison’s.
TOMBSTONE (1994)
Arguably Kilmer’s finest hour was playing the reckless, gambling, boozing, brawling, consumptive gunslinger Doc Holliday opposite Kurt Russell’s Wyatt Earp in the Western based on real events in 1880s America, including the legendary Gunfight At The OK Corral. It was absolutely scandalous that he wasn’t even nominated for the Best Supporting Actor that year for his sly, sardonic mesmerising performance. Kilmer even named his 2020 memoir I’m Your Huckleberry after Holliday’s catchphrase from the movie.
HEAT (1995)
Much was made of the long-awaited screen match-up of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in Michael Mann’s action heist classic. But Kilmer more than held his own against the other acting titans as De Niro’s right-hand man and career thief Chris Shiherlis. As he had in other high-octane roles such as Batman Forever and The Saint, Kilmer handled the action scenes with aplomb, including an unforgettable shootout on the streets of Los Angeles.
KISS KISS BANG BANG (2005)
After a lean patch that included big budget duds such as Alexander, Red Planet and the truly woeful, Queensland-shot The Island of Doctor Moreau, Kilmer returned to his best alongside a rehabilitated Robert Downey Jr in the smart, snappy black comedy crime drama, written and directed by Shane Black. The former Batman and the future Iron Man made for a killer double act respectively playing a street smart detective and the hopeless Hollywood actor who had hired him to prepare for a role.
Originally published as From action to comedy to westerns: Versatile Val Kilmer could turn his hand to anything
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