EXCLUSIVE: Val Kilmer 'Riddled by Secrets and Regrets In Final Years' — From Murky Affairs to Pain Over the One Role he Never Got to Bring to the Big Screen
Val Kilmer hid a maze of secrets before his death.
April 3 2025, Published 10:23 a.m. ET
Val Kilmer’s life was marked with tragedy, obsession, affairs, and disappointment, all of which formed to make him one of Hollywood’s most complicated characters.
In 1977, he was hit with appalling heartbreak, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
Kilmer was tormented by a childhood tragedy his entire life.
Wesley, his younger, epileptic brother, was relaxing in a jacuzzi when he became unresponsive. He never regained consciousness. He was only 15.
Despite such trials in his youth, however, Kilmer wasn’t only a magnet for tragedy; his stellar acting career was forged at school.
He wasn't the only future star to attend Chatsworth High School.
Others who attended the school with Kilmer include Kevin Spacey and Emmy-winner Mare Winningham. Spacey and Kilmer weren't exactly friends, while he and Winningham were a lot more than that
Kilmer and Winningham started dating while still in secondary school.
They were only teenagers when they fell in love and he became dangerously obsessed with her.
He once dreamed she was cheating on him by kissing someone else
After he woke up, he borrowed a car and drove at least 300 miles to find her.
Kilmer said his family 'were never the same' after his brother's tragic death.
He later claimed he found Winningham at a swimming club kissing another guy.
After breaking into TV, he landed a part in One Too Many along with his ex Winningham and Michelle Pfeiffer.
And it was long before people started that there was a "thing" between Kilmer and Pfeiffer.
Kilmer claimed that there was an "emotional intimacy between" them on set, particularly of shared grief.
However, there’s a possibility that he was using her to get even closer to someone else because he had a crush on her younger sister.
It didn't stop him from writing and self-publishing in 1988 a collection of racy poetry called My Edens After Burns in honor of Michelle.
The 'Top Gun' star (here with Tom Cruise) enjoyed a successful acting career.
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And we can reveal he didn't want to audition for his breakthrough part in Top Gun because he had moralistic qualms about the project, thinking it was a work of propaganda.
He was lucky its the director, Tony Scott, was obsessed with him. Scott just had to have Kilmer audition for the role of Iceman.
Kilmer did everything in his power to not land the part. He claims he "read the lines indifferently," and was amazed when he found out he scored the part. In fact, he even tried to run away after.
The director chased him all the way to the elevator and only managed to stop him by heroically thrusting his hand into the closing door.
And one of his biggest regrets was not being able to take his biopic of writer Mark Twain to the big screen due to his ailing health after being struck down with throat cancer.
Kilmer's planned movie about Twain, which he developed into a one-man play called Citizen Twain, ultimately never materialized, and Kilmer's voice issues during the play's tour, linked to throat cancer, are what led to the project's demise. He spent a fortune on the doomed project.
"I enjoy the depth and soul the piece has that Twain had for his fellow man and America," he told Variety in 2018. "And the comedy that's always so close to the surface, and how valuable his genius is for us today."
