Val Kilmer Resisted Stardom. He Became an Icon Anyway.

Val Kilmer was difficult. This was the mid-’90s consensus for frequent readers of Hollywood trade mags and their mainstream buddy Entertainment Weekly – and at the peak of Kilmer’s Hollywood career, no less. The actor, who died this week at the age of 65, was cast as Batman in 1995’s Batman Forever, replacing Michael Keaton in a more crowd-pleasing hit than the previous film in the series; director Joel Schumacher later called him “childish and impossible,” among other things. Kilmer did not return for the follow-up, Batman & Robin; instead he starred in a remake of The Island of Dr. Moreau, whose director John Frankenheimer flat-out disliked him, and said so; and The Saint, a revival of a master-of-disguise pulp character that did not turn into a major movie franchise. Whether by bad reputation, middling-to-bad box office on his post-Batman movies or odd choices, Kilmer’s big-studio leading-man career more or less ended with the 1990s. In the 2000s, he made an increasing number of direct-to-video films; he has one of those Nicolas Cage/Bruce Willis filmographies where a certain period has something like two dozen movies you’ve never heard of, not even casually.

Step back to look at the fullness of Kilmer’s career, though, and his mid-’90s renouncement of leading-man status, however accidental it may have been, feels more of a piece with his filmography. (It’s worth noting that his on-set antics, which allegedly included shabby treatment of crew members, may well have been unprofessional regardless.) As a young man, he had one of those faces almost otherworldly in its camera-ready prettiness, and while he’d eventually put that lips-and-chin combo to good use as Batman, he most immediately used them for the higher purposes of parody: His film debut — his very first movie role! — was in Top Secret!, the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker follow-up to their hit Airplane! The movie spoofed spy movies and Elvis pictures and was altogether stranger than Airplane!, with the low box office to prove it.

The movie was weirdly prescient in a lot of ways, most prominently that Kilmer was goofing on the idea of the suave leading man he looked like before he’d ever appeared on screen before. But there were more signals of what was to come: Some of his best later movies would depend again on his comic timing; he would play another, more direct Elvis riff in True Romance; Top Secret! had him playing opposite Michael Gough, who would later play Alfred to his Batman; and the movie’s co-director Jim Abrahams would later direct Hot Shots! — a spoof of Top Gun, in which Kilmer co-starred — two years later.

In Top Gun, Kilmer famously embodied Tom “Iceman” Kazansky, rival of Tom Cruise’s Maverick, who eventually succumbs to the Cruise Charm. It’s one of Kilmer’s best-known roles, if likely not one of his most challenging or interesting, but again it feels representative of his career at large, making him the prickly rival rather than the center of the movie’s universe. Kilmer would take center stage plenty of times — never moreso than as Jim Morrison in The Doors, where he manages to channel the singer so successfully that he upstages director Oliver Stone, no small feat — but often seemed more comfortable slightly off to the side, as in the Western Tombstone, where he plays tuberculosis-ridden Doc Holliday to Kurt Russell’s Wyatt Earp. The same year as Batman Forever, the year he starred in the biggest movie of the year as one of the most recognizable characters in the world, he also appeared in a supporting part in Michael Mann’s Heat. He’s very much the third name on the poster, clearly contractually obligated to appear above the title but billed below the movie’s titanic Al Pacino/Robert De Niro match-up.

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After Kilmer’s star faded in the 2000s, this poster looked a little silly: Here are two forever icons, and one guy who mostly does DTV movies now. But Kilmer, as a member of De Niro’s crew, holds his own in a stacked ensemble, and during a Reddit Q&A reported cherishing the entire experience, speaking fondly of the two stars he was able to work with, alongside Ashley Judd, who plays his character’s strong-willed wife. If De Niro and Pacino are the experienced professionals of this crime-movie world, sadly understanding the toll their careers will continue to take on their personal lives, Kilmer’s Chris is the younger man in the thick of it, learning as he goes despite the warnings from De Niro’s Neil McCauley. Though Kilmer was later accused of inflated ego and accompanying arrogance during his peak period, there’s not much trace of those qualities in his Heat performance, no sense that he’s indulging in extra fireworks to get noticed alongside his legendary co-stars. Like his work as Doc Holliday, it’s a character-actor performance imbued with movie-star charisma.

A decade later, just before transitioning to majority-DTV fare, Kilmer gave some more of his best performances; in David Mamet’s Spartan and in Shane Black’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, he nails the highly specific dialogue of those writer-directors. Watching these movies, you’d assume a Kilmer renaissance was coming, rather than the occasional juicy supporting part in solid movies like Déjà Vu and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Still, though he was at the center of fewer big-budget movies, this later Kilmer seemed less volatile, less at odds with his profession, and more at peace with himself.

He also made a bookend of sorts to his Top Secret! debut when he took another part in a spoof of sorts. In MacGruber, based on Will Forte’s SNL character, he plays Dieter Von Cunth, the hero’s nemesis. (Kilmer apparently lived with Forte on and off for several months while searching for a new pad after filming.) Kilmer plays the part as a sly parody of the vaguely European supervillain that was so popular during his own heyday as a star, but also as a man who’s personally a bit affronted that he has to accept a dope like MacGruber as his opponent, only to embrace the absurdity anyway in a gonzo final confrontation featuring a death scene that feels purged of all ego. (Forte literally pisses on his corpse.) His famous role as Iceman combined with his once-toxic reputation made it easy to read Kilmer as aloof. Yet whatever his off-screen relationships or turmoil, his best work rarely feels like that of a “difficult” actor — rather, it feels enamored with the range of experiences that movies can offer, even or especially if those led him away from sustained superstardom.

Kilmer didn’t reprise a lot of roles, but Iceman briefly appears in Top Gun: Maverick, shot in the aftermath of Kilmer’s throat cancer, where he advises Maverick (in writing) that “it’s time to let go,” something that applies to plenty of Kilmer characters. Chris in Heat might be the lead of a different crime picture, or a doomed romance; his swordsman Madmartigan from Willow might be the primary hero of a different fantasy adventure; Doc Holliday might have the focus of a different Western. Instead, these characters stand slightly to the side of the spotlight, complicated and enriched by Kilmer’s humanity.