The news hit like a punch to the chest. Val Kilmer is gone. The Iceman, the gunslinger, the rock god, the Dark Knight — silenced at 65. Fans are stunned, Hollywood is reeling, and his family is grappling with a loss they prayed wouldn’t come so soon. Pneumonia. Complications. A long fight after thro… Continues…

His later years were a different kind of performance: a public battle with throat cancer that stole his voice but not his spirit. Even after a tracheostomy and painful treatments, he returned to the screen in “Top Gun: Maverick,” his voice rebuilt with AI as his body bore the scars of illness. Behind the legend stood a father, a colleague, and a complicated, fiercely committed artist whose absence will echo for decades