Look back at Val Kilmer’s best-known roles

Ask a group of film fans which role they will most remember actor Val Kilmer for, and each person will probably give you a different answer.

His performances in films like The Doors, Heat and Batman Forever are all likely to come up, while Willow and True Romance have their own dedicated fans.

One of his biggest films, Top Gun, is not only beloved by people old enough to have seen it when it was released in 1986, but also a much younger generation who are familiar with the much-memed scene of Kilmer’s Iceman playing volleyball.

Here are some of his most memorable roles from his wide-ranging stage and screen career.

Kilmer’s first screen role was opposite Michelle Pfeiffer in an ABC Afterschool Special. He played her character’s boyfriend, who drives drunk with devastating results.

Another of his earliest film roles was in 1985 comedy film Real Genius, in which he starred opposite Gabriel Jarret.

Kilmer’s real career breakthrough came the following year, when he appeared in Top Gun, one of the biggest box office hits of the 1980s.

Kilmer played Tom “Iceman” Kazansky, the arrogant rival to Tom Cruise’s Pete “Maverick” Mitchell.

Two years later, Kilmer starred as a mercenary swordsman in Willow, the fantasy adventure directed by Ron Howard.

Kilmer and Joanne Whalley starred together in films including Willow and Twixt, and in 1989 they played a couple who rob a pair of Las Vegas mobsters in Kill Me Again. They got married in 1988.

Kilmer channelled the spirit of singer Jim Morrison in director Oliver Stone’s 1991 biopic of US rock band The Doors.

In 1993’s True Romance, Kilmer played a version of Elvis Presley who is a figment of Christian Slater’s imagination. The film was written by Quentin Tarantino and saw Kilmer reunited with Top Gun director Tony Scott.

In 1995, Kilmer delivered a memorable and chilling performance in Michael Mann’s Heat, as the right-hand man of a criminal played by Robert De Niro.

In the same year, Kilner played one of his most defining roles as Bruce Wayne, the titular superhero in Batman Forever, opposite Nicole Kidman.

In 1997, Kilmer appeared in The Saint as a high-tech thief and master of disguise who uses the moniker of various saints.

Not all of Kilmer’s films were box office hits, however. The Island Of Dr Moreau, released in 1996, was a critical and comercial flop.

Red Planet, which was set on Mars, earned $33m on a budget of $80m in 2000.

In 2004, Kilmer played King Philip in Alexander, which co-starred Colin Farrell as Alexander the Great.

Kilmer’s stage roles included a 2005 stint in London’s West End in The Postman Always Rings Twice at the Playhouse Theatre.

Later that year, he appeared with Robert Downey Jr (right) and Michelle Monoghan (centre) in the crime comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

In 2006, he appeared in CBS mini-series Comanche Moon, pictured with Troy Baker as Pea Eye Parker (left) and Keith Robinson as Joshua Deets (right).

Kilmer again reunited with Top Gun director Tony Scott for hit 2006 action sci-fi film Deja Vu, also starring Denzel Washington (left) and Adam Goldberg (right).

Kilmer starred in two films opposite rapper 50 Cent – 2009’s Streets of Blood and 2010’s Gun, both of which were released directly to video and DVD.

Kilmer was nominated for a Grammy in 2012 for best spoken word album, for voicing Zorro in an audio drama adaptation of The Mark of Zorro.

Kilmer played writer Mark Twain in a one-man stage show called Citizen Twain in California in 2012.

Later that year, Kilmer filmed scenes for Terrence Malick’s film Song To Song at a Texas music festival. The film was released five years later, in 2017.

In 2013, Kilmer appeared as himself in Life’s Too Short, the comedy series created by Warwick Davis, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. Kilmer and Davis had previously appeared together in Willow.

Kilmer was pictured with Al Pacino at a live reading of Shakespeare’s Live Read of The Merchant Of Venice in 2019, more than two decades after starring together in Heat.

Off screen, Kilmer dated a number of high-profile women over the years, including Cher, Angelina Jolie, Daryl Hannah and Cindy Crawford.

Kilmer launched his movie Twixt at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2011.