Val Kilmer died on Tuesday just before the Top Gun actor was set to walk the red carpet at the Beverly Hills Film Festival.
“It was a shock to find this out. We had just confirmed Val to attend the west coast premiere of American Badass: A Michael Madsen Retrospective this past weekend,” Nino Simone, founder and president of the Beverly Hills Film Festival, said Wednesday in a statement.
Kilmer died in Los Angeles on Tuesday at age 65 of pneumonia, his daughter, actress Mercedes Kilmer, told The New York Times.
”He [Kilmer] was thrilled to come out in support of his friend [Madsen]. I know PR was on the phone, trying to get a hold of the driver, bringing Val for his 7:30 p.m. red carpet arrival. The story and news of his death were reported, literally at the same, exact time. Unbelievable, and so heartbreaking. Our hearts go out to his family,” Simone added.
The Beverly Hills fest opened with a world premiere for Hello Beautiful, which stars Tricia Helfer in a drama about a successful model who is diagnosed with breast cancer. Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2015, and Val, a stirring documentary about his life that premiered at Cannes in July 2021, showed him needing a breathing tube.
His illness followed a Hollywood career where Kilmer played Batman and Jim Morrison, and had memorable roles as Iceman in Top Gun and Doc Holliday in Tombstone. His other performances included as Robert De Niro’s nasty henchman in Michael Mann’s Heat (1995); as Marlon Brando’s insane assistant in John Frankenheimer’s The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996) and as the suave crook Simon Templar in Phillip Noyce’s The Saint (1997).
Mann was among the tributes to Kilmer that poured in on Wednesday, saying in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, “While working with Val on Heat I always marveled at the range, the brilliant variability within the powerful current of Val’s possessing and expressing character. After so many years of Val battling disease and maintaining his spirit, this is tremendously sad news.”
The 25th Beverly Hills Film Festival is set to run through April 6.