Val Kilmer, the actor best known for his roles in Top Gun, Batman Forever and The Doors, has died at the age of 65.

His daughter Mercedes told the New York Times that the cause of death was pneumonia. Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014 and later recovered, after treatment with chemotherapy and trachea surgery that had reduced his vocal capability.

Born in Los Angeles in 1959, Kilmer was one of the youngest students ever admitted to the acting programme at the Juilliard School, aged 17. He started out as a stage actor and rose to prominence in the late 1980s with his roles in movie comedies Top Secret! and Real Genius before landing a role as Iceman in the box office smash Top Gun.

With his star ascendant, he took the lead role in Ron Howard and George Lucas’s fantasy epic Willow, where he met his future wife – his co-star, Joanne Whalley, with whom he would have two children. The pair divorced in 1996.

Oliver Stone cast him as Jim Morrison in his biopic The Doors, and Kilmer also landed roles as Elvis Presley in True Romance and Doc Holliday in the western Tombstone. It was this performance that landed Kilmer the biggest role of his career, that of Bruce Wayne/Batman in Batman Forever. The film received mixed reviews but was a box office hit, and Kilmer became a huge star, able to demand millions of dollars for his roles.

He did not return as the caped crusader for the next film in the series, Batman and Robin, and instead took roles as Simon Templar in a reboot of The Saint and opposite Marlon Brando in the poorly received The Island of Dr Moreau.

After another box office disaster in 2000, Red Planet, Kilmer took roles in smaller films with a lower profile. In 2005 he was cast opposite Robert Downey Jr in Shane Black’s directorial debut, the crime comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang; in 2012 he starred in a one-man show Citizen Twain, in which he played the writer Mark Twain; and in 2017 he appeared briefly in Terrence Malick’s music-industry drama Song to Song. He returned to the Iceman role in 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick, in which his character has become the commander of the US Pacific fleet.

Kilmer was well known for falling out with his directors and castmates on set. Joel Schumacher, who directed him in Batman Forever, said: “I pray I don’t work with [Kilmer] again … we had two weeks where he did not speak to me, but it was bliss.” Marlon Brando, his co-star in The Island of Dr Moreau, reportedly told him: “You are confusing your talent with the size of your paycheck”, while that film’s director, John Frankenheimer, was quoted as saying: “I don’t like Val Kilmer, I don’t like his work ethic and I don’t want to be associated with him ever again.”

However, despite the feuds, his ability was respected. Even Schumacher later said he considered Kilmer to have been the best Batman, while Irwin Winkler – Kilmer’s director on At First Sight – described working with him as a “wonderful experience”. “Some people expect an actor to be like a wooden Indian, to do what he’s told and never open his mouth,” Winkler added. “But Val has lots of great ideas and he should be listened to.”

In his later years, Kilmer became more engaged in politics, and said in 2009 that he was considering running to be governor of New Mexico, where he lived. He appeared at rallies as part of Ralph Nader’s 2008 presidential campaign and in 2013 lobbied for religious exemptions to Obamacare.

Kilmer is survived by his two children with Whalley, Mercedes and Jack.