Instant New York Times Bestseller Legendary actor Val Kilmer shares the stories behind his most beloved roles, reminisces about his star-studded career and love life, and reveals the truth behind his recent health struggles in a remarkably candid autobiography. Val Kilmer has played many iconic roles over his nearly four-decade film career. Memoirs were made for confessions, and Val Kilmer’s I’m Your Huckleberry opens with a fairly innocuous one: The actor, artist, and newly minted author admits he readily develops crushes on everything and everyone. He claims to have been called on it by friends and exes, including his former wife and fellow thespian, Joanne Whalley.
Actor Val Kilmer has opened up about his battle with cancer as well as his past relationships in a new memoir. In an exclusive interview with Good Morning America’s Chris Connelly, the actor talked about his struggles with cancer.
Dear reader. I have a crush on you. And now, more than ever want to escape with you. It’s dangerous, though based on what's happening throughout the world, it would seem everything is. They say when one of your five senses is compromised, you can feel the others become heightened. My speech was compromised, a few years back, but I now see and feel things I had never seen. Val Kilmer's first acting job was a TV ad for hamburgers. He walked off the set because he could not get into his character's 'motivation,' according to The Telegraph.He was 12 years old.
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“I feel a lot better than I sound, but I feel wonderful,” Kilmer shared. The actor has undergone a tracheotomy which alters the way he speaks but helps him breathe better.
“My lungs and throat swelled up as well,” he said of his diagnosis.
Val Kilmer is famous for his iconic roles such as Icemen in ‘Top Gun’ and Jim Morrison in ‘The Doors’. The actor has disclosed many aspects of his life in his new memoir, ‘I’m Your Huckleberry.’ For his career to his cancer diagnosis as well as his many high-profile relationships, the memoir sheds a light on every aspect of his life. Val Kilmer has dated big Hollywood names like Cher, Ellen Barkin, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Cindy Crawford.
“You have to be committed with a woman that’s as dynamic and as committed to their work as someone like Cindy Crawford who was the number one model on the planet at the time,” he said of his past relationships.
Moreover, Val Kilmer is now ready to make his return to the big screen. He will be seen in the highly anticipated ‘Top Gun’ sequel ‘Top Gun: Maverick‘. He will be stepping into the shoes of his old character Tom “Iceman” Kazansky, opposite Tom Cruise.
“It was absolutely moving,” said Kilmer. “I really was surprised and Tom was wearing his jacket from the first movie and it was just very moving.”
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Val Kilmer's kids were the sole reason behind his decision to seek traditional cancer treatment. In an interview with The New York Times, the 60-year-old actor discusses how he initially planned to treat his throat cancer through his Christian Science faith. That plan changed, though, due to his kids, Jack, 24, and Mercedes, 28, whom he shares with his ex-wife, Joanne Whalley.
In Kilmer's faith, his diagnosis is rather described as the 'suggestion of throat cancer,' which is 'the idea is rather than say I have it or possess it, there is a claim, there’s a suggestion that this is a fact.'
Due to that classification, Kilmer believed he would find the cure by working with his practitioner, Christian Science’s version of a spiritual adviser. Throughout that work, Kilmer would relocate and pray his fear away so that his body would no longer 'manifest outwardly what can be diagnosed as a malady.'
His kids, who are not Christian Scientists, protested that plan, though, and so Kilmer relented.
'I just didn’t want to experience their fear, which was profound,' Kilmer says. 'I would’ve had to go away, and I just didn’t want to be without them.'
What followed was surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, which left him with a tracheostomy tube and a feeding tube. Though Kilmer's doctors consider his treatments a success, the actor thinks it's his faith and prayer that cured him.
'That’s from radiation and chemotherapy. It’s not from cancer,' he says of his tracheostomy tube. 'That 'treatment' caused my suffering.'
Throughout his treatment, Kilmer never feared death because dying doesn't mean the same thing in the Christian Science faith, rather a person who dies in the traditional sense simply isn't gone, they just aren't able to be perceived by people anymore.
'Someone comes up to you and says you have only four months to live, and the concept of time is a human one. So, if you describe the divine concept of time, there is no time,' he explains.
As for the time in 2016 when Michael Douglas discussed Kilmer's cancer battle and Kilmer denied that such a battle existed, the Top Gun actor said his statement was because he 'didn't have cancer.'
'They said I was denying that I had cancer, and when they asked me, I didn’t have cancer,' he says. 'It was a bit like do you have a broken bone? And if you broke it in high school, you would say no. Suddenly suspect. I have had a bone broken, but why are you being so aggressive? I had a bone broken. It was broken in my leg. ‘Oh, so you have a broken leg.’ ‘No, no, I don’t,’ I say. I did have a broken leg.'
Prior to his health struggles, Kilmer often faced criticism for his on-set behavior, including being described as 'psychotic' by his Batman Forever director Joel Schumacher -- he was later replaced in the role by George Clooney -- and accused of touching a lit cigarette to a crew member's sideburn, a claim he denies as 'madness.'
'In an unflinching attempt to empower directors, actors and other collaborators to honor the truth and essence of each project, an attempt to breathe Suzukian life into a myriad of Hollywood moments, I had been deemed difficult and alienated the head of every major studio,' Kilmer writes in his memoir, I'm Your Huckleberry, according to the Times.
“Everyone has to work out their own salvation,' he tells the outlet. 'How to live and by what morality, and I found that the part that I feel bad about is hurting somebody in the process.'
Val Kilmer Book
Following that point in his life and amid his ongoing health issues, Kilmer says that he 'could not possibly be in a better place for attracting better and better roles.'
'If an actor is fortunate enough to do so, to steer their own course and own their own material, they control their own destiny, creating their own products,' Kilmer says.
Val Kilmer Autobiography Signed
In addition to the five projects he's filmed this year, Kilmer's gearing up for the release of Top Gun: Maverick, the long anticipated sequel to the 1986 flick, in which he'll reprise his role of Iceman. Though he won't spill details on the film, which is set to be released in December, Kilmer gave one clue about his onscreen relationship with Tom Cruise's character, Maverick, who was his enemy in the original movie.
Val Kilmer Memoir Review
'We’re friends,' he said. 'This time we’re friends.'
Val Kilmer Memoir Of Love
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