Val Kilmer, who has died at the age of 65, spent his career at war with himself. Fame was a burden. Success was a chore. He masked his face as Batman, disguised it in The Saint, surrounded it with a halo of unruly curls as Jim Morrison. In True Romance, he is Christian Slater’s id – a devil on his shoulder who speaks and moves like Elvis – and mostly off-camera. You see his neck. His chest. His face through a blurry reflection in a mirror. What was a Val Kilmer role without a degree of subterfuge to it?
But it meant that when you did see him – once he dropped the pout, the mystery and the brooding stoicism – it would feel revelatory. Think back tothe crushing devastation of his last scene in Heat, when he realises he’ll never see his wife again. His smile droops, his eyes are suddenly moist. Or what about that gum-smacking grin of his in Top Gun. Or the heartwarming vulnerability of his return in Top Gun: Maverick 36 years later, his voice dimmed by his real-life throat cancer, but that twinkle intact, that cocky swagger, those sharp cheekbones that could still do damage.
