Val Kilmer Hollywood’s Leading Man Of The 1990s
Val Kilmer’s macho action figures held a melancholy just below the surface.
Leading man of 1990s Hollywood, Val Kilmer, has died at 65 from pneumonia. Battling cancer since 2014, he has not been a frequent presence on our film screens for most of this century. While he has recently done some interesting projects, he never recaptured his fame and box-office draw of the 1980s and ‘90s, when he appeared in iconic films such as Top Gun (1986) and Batman Forever (1995).
His standout performance as Tom Cruise’s swaggering, self-assured rival Iceman in Top Gun made him a star. But the film that really cemented his reputation as a leading man was Oliver Stone’s The Doors (1991), in which he played Jim Morrison to astonishing effect. He is the best thing about that film.
In 1993, he starred as...
