The Tragic Real Life Story Of Val Kilmer

willow top gun tombstone that's just a fraction of val kilmer's legendary resume but off-screen his life hasn't been without its ups and downs from onset outbursts to brushes with death this is his tragic real-life story kilmer once told the guardian there's nothing good about divorce and he's known that from a young age as he comes from a broken home himself he grew up affluent in los angeles the son of eugene an aerospace equipment distributor and gladys a real estate developer when he was nine his parents marriage crumbled and he went to live with his dad his older brother mark and his younger brother wesley kilmer has said that the breakup of his family took a toll on him emotionally and strained his relationship with his father as he described it i was quiet more contemplative than outgoing things didn't go well between me and my father for a very long time it's not clear if kilmer ever patched up his relationship with his dad when eugene died in 1995 val had a falling out with his brother mark as they battled over their father's estate in 1996 mark told people magazine val has no example in his life of a good relationship he can look to kilmer's acting journey began when he was accepted into the legendary juilliard school in new york city at the age of 16. but just before his time there his life changed tragically forever his younger brother wesley was an aspiring director whom he worshipped as he told the telegraph in 2004 he was just an amazing artist i was sort of in awe of him as val saw it wesley was destined to be another steven spielberg or george lucas but on the eve of val's departure to juilliard wesley suffered an epileptic fit and fell into the family's swimming pool and drowned as val recalled to the new york times i didn't really get back to earth until about two or three years after my brother died it's like that nickelback song i'm sick of sight without the sense of feeling in 2019 kilmer memorialized wesley on instagram with a boyhood picture of himself and his siblings along with the caption me and my perfect brothers mark and wesley while kilmer was at juilliard his success was marred by internal misery he hated the school and he rubbed his mentors and colleagues the wrong way he disdained the rules the authoritarian vibe the formalism and the silly vocal exercises nevertheless he flourished he landed lead parts on stage he even wrote his own play with some classmates called how it all began famed theater producer joseph papp caught the play while visiting the school and liked what he saw it ran for a month at the public theater in new york kilmer was good enough for broadway as he landed a role in john burns slab boys but he was demoted twice first by a young kevin bacon and then by sean penn next came shakespeare's as you like it in minneapolis with tony winner patti lupone he'd found his calling but the bitterness that accompanied his success would not relent in 2004 kilmer told the telegraph i'm a character actor but i look like a leading man those looks and that mindset made him the perfect choice to play the tortured but beautiful musician jim morrison in oliver stone's 1991 biopic the doors the film plots the rocker's rise to rock stardom and his quick decline into drug abuse and then death at the age of 27. kilmer is brilliant in the part but he began cementing his diva reputation during production while feuding with stone about the direction of the film or as stone diplomatically put it to esquire in 2005 he speaks in a way that is propelled from deep inside and he doesn't always realize how the things he says will sound to other people kilmer's obsessiveness sometimes pushed some of his colleagues too far actress caitlin ohini even claims that kilmer assaulted her during an audition for the doors that got out of control as she told buzzfeed in 2017 when i got to the room valk helmer picked me up and shaked me throwing me down to the floor she filed a police report for battery about a month after the audition and was eventually paid a 24 500 settlement however the film's casting director risa bremen-garcia believes that ohini's version of events is blown out of proportion as the scene itself was supposed to be physical and volatile as she explained to buzzfeed i am not somebody who takes this stuff lightly i can tell the difference between something that's abusive and a moment that got carried away in the early 90s kelmer delivered two of the most acclaimed performances of his career in the 1993 western tombstone he played the legendarily loquacious doc holliday he followed that up with the part of a henchman in 1995's heat arguably the best crime thriller of all time but even character actors are tempted by the cowl kilmer claims that he happened to spend the day in a bat cave when he got the call to replace michael keaton for 1995's batman forever it was a hit but kilmer was a nightmare director joel schumacher called him quote childish and impossible kilmer developed a reputation for making impossible demands and being rude to co-stars while making 1997's the saint he reportedly told the crew to avoid eye contact with him his island of dr moreau director john frankenheimer declared i will never climb mount everest and i will never work with val kilmer again kilmer later explained his behavior by writing in his memoir i'm your huckleberry in an unflinching attempt to empower directors actors and other collaborators to honor the truth and essence of each project i had been deemed difficult and alienated the head of every major studio well things didn't work out kilmer used his bittersweet hollywood earnings to purchase a 6 000 acre ranch in new mexico but he quickly became as hated by his neighbors as he was by his co-stars he dubbed the area around his ranch quote the homicide capital of the southwest and oddly claimed that 80 of the people in his county were drunk he also insulted vietnam veterans in a 2005 interview with esquire by calling them quote borderline criminal or poor kilmer's neighbors demanded that he apologize an attempt was even made to block permits for the bed and breakfast on his property the matter grew so heated that it attracted the attention of the new mexico aclu who offered to represent kilmer kilmer's ranch was his slice of heaven it's where he proposed to his former wife joanne wally in 1988 but 20 years later the 2008 financial collapse crushed him back taxes mounted and he ended up listing all but 14 acres of the property for 33 million dollars in 2009. he sold to a texas oil magnate in 2011 for 18.5 million dollars as he told the new york times i just lost my home like a million other people it was pretty awful in 2014 kilmer began having a hard time swallowing shortly thereafter he was staying in his friend cher's guest house when he woke up vomiting blood traditional doctors told him it was throat cancer although his spiritual advisor claimed that he merely needed to pray the fear away his health was fading fast and he was caught in a battle between his christian science belief and god as a healer and the desperate pleas from his kids to seek more earthly remedies they pleaded with their stubborn father to save his own life he eventually bowed to their pressure as he told the new york times i just didn't want to experience their fear which was profound i would have had to go away and i just didn't want to be without them kilmer got surgery on his throat in 2014 which was followed by chemotherapy and radiation the surgery left him with a tracheostomy tube a feeding tube and shortness of breath his once booming baritone was reduced to a rasp in another dark twist of fate his daughter mercedes was hit by a car leaving her with a scar running down the length of her leg she joined her father in the hospital while kilmer's son jack was devastated as he tended to both of their bedsides wanted to keep his battle with cancer private but in 2016 when his the ghost and the darkness co-star michael douglas was asked about his own fight with the disease he offhandedly mentioned kilmer's disease kilmer wasn't pleased as he took to facebook to deny the story writing i love michael douglas but he's misinformed i have no cancer whatsoever but this wasn't exactly true kilmer was in remission and making a bit of a semantic argument when asked by the new york times why he denied his diagnosis so vociferously he simply replied i didn't have cancer it was a bit like do you have a broken bone and if you broke it in high school you would say no in april 2020 kilmer appeared on good morning america and admitted i was diagnosed with throat cancer which healed very quickly but in classic kilmer fashion he made sure to preface that admission stoically by saying i feel a lot better than i sound but i feel wonderful what do you mean most about your old voice phil in the mid-90s kilmer's relationship with his wife joanne wally was beginning to crumble the end was bitter his shooting schedule had kept them apart and by 1996 they'd become so estranged that as kilmer recounted to elle i turned on cnn and found out my wife had filed for divorce she took the kids and moved to a different state over the years kilmer has been romantically linked to other hollywood stars including daryl hannah cindy crawford and angelina jolie even cher came courting she had a friend approach kilmer at a manhattan restaurant in 1981 he recalled in his memoir her name shocked me to the point that i spit out my spaghetti while exclaiming no as for cher she told people magazine in 1984 val is terrific but sometimes it's just too intense and hot but the days of famous women on kilmer's arm are now long gone he says that he hasn't dated anyone in the decades since he split from his wife he now lives largely alone on a small portion of what remains of his once sprawling ranch as he mourns in his memoir i haven't had a girlfriend in 20 years the truth is i am lonely part of every day modern medicine may have saved velk helmer's life but he's not very happy about the cost he's boasted that he could once perform a hundred different voices and endless imitations and he believes that it was his treatment that has caused his suffering regarding his hallowed voice he told the new york times that's from radiation and chemotherapy it's not from cancer looking back on his life kilmer accepts his fate but he also laments how many people he alienated along the way as he put it everyone has to work out their own salvation how to live and by what morality and i found that the part that i feel bad about is hurting somebody in the process in this reckoning though he has managed to mend some old wounds kilmer once said sneeringly of one of his top gun co-stars you can't make fun of tom cruise poor thing but now with the sequel top gun maverick wrapped and their anxious youths behind them kalmar has said we're friends this time we're friends kilmer turned 60 in 2019 and he clearly feels that his prognosis is good he says that he had no fear during treatment and has no fear now besides for someone of his faith death isn't death it's just a transition as he puts it the concept of time is a human one so if you describe the divine concept of time there is no time how would your help check out one of our newest videos right here plus even more nikki swift videos about your favorite stars are coming soon subscribe to our youtube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one

Channel: Nicki Swift

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Id: uoHA3b1U3SA

Length: 11min 26sec (686 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 08 2020