Val Kilmer bought Kurt Russell an acre of land overlooking Boot Hill, the historic Tombstone, Arizona cemetery, back in 1993 after the two finished filming the Western classic “Tombstone. ” Russell has kept the land ever since, not for its value, but because the friend who gave it to him is now gone, and it remains one of the last tangible connections he has to him. When the world asked Russell about Kilmer after his death on April 1, 2025, the 75-year-old actor chose honesty over polished tribute. He described a complicated genius with whom he shared an uncomplicated friendship, and recalled a final visit with a sick friend who could barely speak but still had something important to say.
Russell’s path to “Tombstone” began decades earlier. Born in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1951, he was the son of character actor and former baseball player Bing Russell. At 12, he was the lead of the TV Western “The Travels of Jamie McPheeters” and later spent his adolescence as a clean-cut Disney contract player, a box he grew tired of occupying. He had briefly pursued minor league baseball until a shoulder injury ended that career.
The turning point came in 1979 when director John Carpenter cast him as Elvis Presley in an ABC TV film. The role earned him an Emmy nomination and proved he was far more than the safe Disney kid. He and Carpenter then collaborated on the 1981 cult classic “Escape from New York” and the 1982 horror landmark “The Thing,” films that solidified Russell as a serious, versatile leading man. Russell first met Kilmer on the set of 1983’s “Silkwood.
” Kilmer was a 22-year-old Juilliard-trained actor dating Cher at the time. Russell told Rolling Stone that the impression was immediate; he recognized a young man who was intensely serious about his craft, the same kind of serious Russell carried in himself. They wouldn’t work together for another decade. Kilmer, born in Los Angeles in 1959, was the youngest person ever admitted to Juilliard’s drama division.
He made an impression on Broadway before breaking into films with “Top Secret” and “Real Genius. ” The film that made him a star was 1986’s “Top Gun,” where he played Tom “Iceman” Kazansky opposite Tom Cruise. He had resisted the role, fearing being the bad guy, but his controlled, precise performance became a defining part of the film’s success. In 1991, Kilmer’s startling transformation into Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone’s “The Doors” earned wide acclaim.
That was followed by strong work in “True Romance” and Michael Mann’s “Heat. ” His reputation for being difficult on set had begun to grow during the 1990s, with director Joel Schumacher describing him as “childish and impossible” during the making of “Batman Forever,” yet his performances remained consistently extraordinary. Then came “Tombstone” in 1993. The production itself was troubled, and Russell stepped in to effectively direct while maintaining his performance as Wyatt Earp.
The film has since become one of the most beloved Westerns ever made, but the performance the world remembers most is Kilmer’s Doc Holliday. Playing the tubercular gambler as a man who had made peace with his own death, Kilmer delivered a darkly elegant performance and gave American cinema one of its most quotable lines. “And then there was the gift exchange,” Russell recalled in his Rolling Stone interview. He gave Kilmer a burial plot in Boot Hill cemetery, explaining that Doc Holliday was all about death.
Kilmer, in turn, had secretly bought Russell an acre of land overlooking the graveyard, reasoning that Wyatt Earp was all about life and deserved the long view of everything. Russell summarized the exchange simply: “Doc Holliday was all about death, but Wyatt’s all about life. I guess that pretty much says it all. ”
Following “Tombstone,” Kilmer reached the commercial peak of his career with “Batman Forever,” though he was replaced by George Clooney for the sequel amid reported friction on set.
The chaotic production of “The Island of Dr. Moreau” further cemented his difficult reputation. Yet across four decades, he remained incapable of giving a performance that didn’t reveal something authentic. In 2014, Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer.
He kept the diagnosis private for two years, initially denying it when actor Michael Douglas mentioned it publicly. He confirmed it in 2017, describing the tracheotomies, chemotherapy, and radiation he endured. The cancer eventually went into remission, but the treatment permanently destroyed his voice. He wrote on his website in 2022, “It isn’t easy to talk and be understood.
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He continued to work. In 2021, the documentary “Val,” assembled from decades of his own home video footage, was released. His son Jack narrated the film because Kilmer could no longer speak clearly. It offered an unflinching look at his obsession with craft, the joy of the work, and the considerable cost of his illness.
Tom Cruise fought to include him in 2022’s “Top Gun: Maverick. ” Kilmer reprised his role as Iceman in an emotionally devastating scene where the old rivals finally make peace. Because he could no longer speak the words, his voice was digitally altered. The scene served as a farewell, and “Top Gun: Maverick” would be his final film.
Three years before Kilmer’s death, Russell went to visit him at his home. He described the visit to Rolling Stone, recounting that while Kilmer had to work to speak, he still managed to be funny and wonderful. Russell then recalled the moment that defined that final meeting: Kilmer looked at him and said, “Sometimes I could have been a little bit nicer to a lot of people,” before laughing gently at himself. “He was a good guy.
Everybody’s got their full 360 degrees of their person,” Russell said. “Nobody gets out of here alive. So, I hope he rests in peace. If anybody deserves to rest in peace, it would be Val.
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Kilmer died on April 1, 2025, in Los Angeles, surrounded by his family. His daughter Mercedes confirmed the news. The cause of death was pneumonia following his years-long recovery from throat cancer. He was 65.
He is survived by his son Jack and daughter Mercedes, who watched over him through the stardom, the struggles, the illness, and the final grace. Kilmer and Russell never worked together after “Tombstone,” but the bond formed on that film proved lasting. Russell has never let go of the acre of land overlooking Boot Hill that Kilmer gave him more than 30 years ago.
It was, in its way, the perfect expression of the friendship between a man about the craft and a man about life, and the rightful view from above belongs now to the man who saw his friend clearly enough to know, from the very first moment on a movie set in 1983, exactly who Val Kilmer was.
