Sophia Michaels
While working on “Top Gun: Maverick,” Kilmer also wrote and recorded a book about his experiences, which was released in 2022. In it, he talks about how the book has helped him “deal with the things that were going on in my life” and “what it’s like to be in the public’s eye” as he watches other actors take the stage.
After a successful career spanning three decades, Val Kilmer stepped away from the spotlight for health reasons. While working on a passion project about Mark Twain and Christian Scientist founder Mary Baker Eddy in 2014, Kilmer discovered a lump in his throat. He had symptoms, including waking up in a pool of his own blood, and he was eventually diagnosed with throat cancer — or, as Kilmer, a Christian Scientist, called it in The New York Times, the “suggestion of throat cancer.” He prayed to fight the disease and was fortunately persuaded by his ex-wife and two children (who are not Christian Scientists) to seek medical treatment. Kilmer underwent surgery on his throat — two tracheostomies, followed by chemotherapy and radiation that he said: “zapped my whole throat, and it’s still dry as a bone.” He was left with the tracheostomy tube, and it’s very difficult to speak.
“Speaking, once my joy and lifeblood, has become an hourly struggle,” Kilmer wrote in his autobiography “I’m Your Huckleberry” (via Men’s Health). He can only be barely understood, something he credits to his acting lessons and the vocal exercises he learned as one of the youngest students ever to attend Juilliard. He now describes his voice as “Marlon Brando after a couple of bottles of tequila. It isn’t a frog in my throat. More like a buffalo.” But fortunately, technology has offered Kilmer a way to continue using his voice, as fans saw in the 2022 movie “Top Gun: Maverick.”
