On April 1, Hollywood woke up to devastating news. Val Kilmer, a longtime actor known for his roles in The Doors, Top Gun and Batman Forever, sadly passed away at age 65. His daughter, Mercedes Kilmer, confirmed the news to the New York Times and revealed the cause was pneumonia.
Online, fans of Kilmer and celebrities alike are sharing their tributes to Kilmer. Among them was Cher, who dated Kilmer for two years from 1982 and 1984 and remained friends ever since.
“VALUS / Will miss u,” the “Believe” singer wrote on X, referring to her nickname for him, Valus Maximus. “U Were Funny, crazy, pain in the ass, GREAT FRIEND, kids💜U.”
Cher then referenced one of Kilmer’s most celebrated roles as Mark Twain in his one-man show Citizen Twain. “BRILLIANT as Mark Twain,” she wrote.
She also celebrated his fight against throat cancer, which he was diagnosed with in 2014. “BRAVE here during ur sickness,” Cher ended her message.
With this sweet message, it’s safe to say Cher and Kilmer were much more than exes throughout their lives and cared for each other greatly since their split in 1986.
In an interview with People in 2021, Cher gushed about meeting Kilmer for the first time.
“He’d tell me about his dreams,” Cher said of their first conversations. “He took me to a Japanese performance of Macbeth and I was thinking, ‘This guy is nuts, we’re not going to get along at all.’ He was so young. Was he 22? What was I? I don’t know. Thirty something. It was a bigger deal back then.”
Despite their controversial age gap, their friendship soon blossomed into something more.
“Our sense of humor, and what we would put up with from one another, was more than I think I’ve ever had with any other guy,” she reflected. “He would just go off and do his own thing and you just had to be prepared. And he was so beautiful. It went from madly in love and laughing hysterically to respecting each other’s ability.”
Starting in 2014, Kilmer began his longtime battle with throat cancer, which included getting a tracheostomy. Throughout it all, Cher, now as a friend, was by his side. “He was at my house a lot of the time he was sick,” she told the outlet. “He was brave the whole time. I saw how sick he was.”
Overall, it seems there was nothing but love between them over the years.
“I loved him—and I love him,” she said. “He’s a true artist and Renaissance man. He was sick and it didn’t stop him. He created an extension of his art and his life,” she said of his 2021 documentary Val. “Look what he created and even the things he let you see that nobody would let you see. Even the worst things, he wanted to be in the documentary because he wanted to show you who he was.”
May Kilmer rest in peace.
