The official cause of Val Kilmer‘s death has been revealed. The Batman Forever and Top Gun star passed away on April 2nd at the age of 65, with initial reports stating Kilmer died of pneumonia after years of battling throat cancer. PEOPLE reviewed a copy of Val Kilmer’s death certificate, which lists his cause of death as pneumonia. His daughter, Mercedes, originally told The New York Times that her father died of pneumonia. Underlying causes on the death certificate include acute hypoxemic respiratory failure, chronic respiratory failure, and squamous cell carcinoma of the base of the tongue. It’s also noted that Kilmer’s body was cremated on April 7th.
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Val Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014, which resulted in the actor decreasing his roles, save for a special appearance in Top Gun: Maverick. Kilmer was able to reprise his role as Iceman, where he shared a scene with Tom Cruise. Iceman communicates with Cruise’s Maverick via text on a computer screen. The filmmakers also used AI and post-production to give Iceman a brief speaking line.
Kilmer addressed his health in a 2020 memoir titled I’m Your Huckleberry, writing, “Reports emerged that I was in denial. Well, denial is a funny thing. I was not denying that I had had cancer but was simply saying I no longer did.”
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“And to be honest,” he continued, “it was very hard to embrace my original diagnosis. It was surreal. I didn’t believe I was decomposing, and I wasn’t ready to die.”
He also revealed in the memoir how he ignored the early signs of his health deteriorating until he was finally hospitalized for throat cancer. “One night I suddenly awoke vomiting blood that covered the bed like a scene out of The Godfather,” Kilmer wrote. He said he “prayed immediately, then called 911.”
Kilmer underwent a tracheotomy, chemotherapy, and radiation to help cure his throat cancer. He wrote that he was cancer-free, and had “been healed of cancer for over four years,” with no recurrences.
“There are things we do every day to soothe the vocal cords and to repair them, but they’re very damaged,” Val Kilmer’s son, Jack, told PEOPLE for a September 2021 cover story. “He doesn’t seem to be in pain when he speaks. Sometimes you can’t shut him up.
One of Val Kilmer’s most noteworthy roles was as The Caped Crusader in 1995’s Batman Forever. Kilmer was the third actor to play Bruce Wayne/Batman in a feature film, succeeding Adam West and Michael Keaton. Kilmer is one of the few actors to play Batman only once, and the film received mixed reactions from fans and critics alike, though Kilmer’s performance as Batman was a highlight.
Batman Forever reportedly has an alternate director’s cut, referred to as “The Schumacher Cut,” which is said to have 50 minutes of additional footage and is less campy and darker than the released film. Writer Akiva Goldsman claims that he has seen this version of Batman Forever and has been pushing for it to be released since the early 2020s, though Warner Bros. currently has no plans to make this version available to the public at this time.
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