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The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’

The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’

The Daily vor 1 Jahr

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53:03

“The force of his will is the thing I remember about him,” says
Taffy Brodesser-Akner, who wrote a profile of Val Kilmer for The
New York Times Magazine in May 2020. “He was sure he was going to
come back to his exact former self. ”

The two met for an interview just as a lockdown due to the
coronavirus pandemic seemed all but certain to happen.

Mr. Kilmer, who was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014 and had
undergone a tracheotomy, was still performing. Mr.
Brodesser-Akner credits him with providing “the first whiff of
overarching hope and positivity that I’d witnessed in I couldn’t
remember how many months.”

“What does somebody do when the thing that they are known for,
which is being a superhero, which is being an action hero, which
is being handsome, which is being this sort of picture of good
health and vigor, what do you do next?” she said. “And a lot of
people, they fade away. But that’s not how it went for Val. ”

Mr. Kilmer, who played classic roles such as Batman and Iceman in
“Top Gun,” died on Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 65.

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