Val Kilmer, once upon a time Iceman: Hollywood's most unmanageable actor
The antagonist of 'Top Gun' died at the age of 65 from complications of pneumonia. He was Jim Morrison for Oliver Stone and especially "Batman Forever"
4' min read
4' min read
If you were a kid in the Reagan 1980s, you could feel like Maverick or Iceman. The hero or the edgy antagonist: it happens when a film marks a decade and Top Gun (1986) by Tony Scott, with its choreographed use of F-14 fighter jets and the bogeyman of Russian Migs behind the horizon line, did just that. Maverick obviously had the face of Tom Cruise, while Iceman was Val Kilmer. Handsome, talented and unlucky: the American actor died at the age of 65 in his Los Angeles home from complications of pneumonia, after an exciting life and a career of ups and downs.
Find another who could play Jim Morrison, the ghost of Elvis Presley and Batman with the same credibility. But the problem was that, thanks to the Suzuki method, as a professional he demanded so much from himself and even more from his collaborators. Who, as long as things work, put up with you but, at the first half-slip, goodbye and thank you.
Juilliard's wunderkind
.In a way he was predestined. He spent his childhood in the Chatsworth neighbourhood of Los Angeles, a half-hour drive from Hollywood. He attended Chatsworth High School along with future Oscar winner Kevin Spacey and Mare Winningham, who would go on to win an Emmy. At only 17, in 1981, he was the youngest theatre student ever admitted to the prestigious Juilliard School in New York. His 15-year-old brother, an aspiring director, died shortly afterwards from an epileptic fit. A trauma that would mark Kilmer's sensibility forever.
At Juilliard, he distracts himself by throwing himself into the Suzuki method, an approach that focuses on the body and overall expression, rather than on the psychological portrayal of the character. If, for example, you play a tuberculosis patient, you get your bed filled with ice (Val Kilmer did this for real in the '93 western Tombstone).
Iceman arrives
.The cinema, as we were saying: the young Val made his debut in 1984 with the devilish film Top Secret!, where he is a kind of Elvis, secret agent in spite of himself, in East Germany (the scene in which he performs Tutti Frutti is memorable), then came School of Geniuses (1985) and above all Top Gun, where he is Iceman. "I didn't want the part. I didn't like the film. The story didn't interest me,' he would write in his memoir. He accepted after being promised that the role would grow from the initial script. A role you don't shake off: Val Kilmer will be Iceman again in the 2022 sequel Top Gun: Maverick.
