Actor Val Kilmer, star of Top Gun and Tombstone, has died aged 65.
He died from pneumonia,The New York Times reported, attributing Kilmer's daughter Mercedes Kilmer.
He was also known for donning the batsuit in Batman Forever, following Michael Keaton.
Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014 and later recovered, Ms Kilmer said.
Val, a 2021 documentary about his life, showed him needing a breathing tube.
After losing his voice, a cameo in Top Gun: Maverick was made possible with the aid of AI technology.
Kilmer's breakthrough role came with the 1986 classic Top Gun, and his role as Tom "Iceman" Kazansky.
But it almost didn't happen.
Kilmer was courted by director Tony Scott but initially baulked.
"I didn't want the part. I didn't care about the film. The story didn't interest me," he wrote in his memoir.
He agreed after being promised that his role would improve from the initial script.
However, it was his portrayal of rock star Jim Morrison in 1991's The Doors that earned him MTV's Movie Award for Best Male Performance.
Actor Josh Brolin was among the first to pay tribute to the star, saying he was a "challenging, brave, uber-creative firecracker".
Hollywood heart-throb to flop maker
Kilmer was one of Hollywood's most prominent leading men in the 1990s before numerous spats with directors and co-stars and a series of flops dented his career.
The youngest actor ever accepted to the Juilliard School at the time he attended, experienced the ups and downs of fame more dramatically than most.
In his later life, Kilmer gained a reputation as temperamental, intense, perfectionistic and sometimes egotistical.
"I have behaved poorly. I have behaved bravely. I have behaved bizarrely to some," he said in his 2021 documentary.
"I deny none of this and have no regrets because I have lost and found parts of myself that I never knew existed.
"And I am blessed."
He made his film debut starring in the 1984 spy spoof Top Secret! before appearing in the goofy 1985 comedy Real Genius.
Kilmer starred in director Ron Howard's 1988 fantasy Willow and married his British co-star Joanne Whalley, with whom he had two children before divorcing.
He also dated Cher for a period.
Playing Jim Morrison
One of his most challenging roles came in director Oliver Stone's The Doors in which he played Jim Morrison, the charismatic and ultimately doomed lead singer of the influential rock band The Doors.
To try to persuade Stone to cast him, Kilmer put together an eight-minute video of himself singing and looking like Morrison at various points in his life. Kilmer's own singing voice is used in the film.
The Doors ushered in the highest-profile years of his career.
In the 1993 Western Tombstone, he played Old West gunfighter Doc Holliday.
The actor — who took part in the Method branch of Suzuki arts training — threw himself into parts.
When he played Doc Holliday, he filled his bed with ice for the final scene to mimic the feeling of dying from tuberculosis.
To play Morrison, he wore leather pants all the time, asked castmates and crew to only refer to him as Jim Morrison and blasted The Doors for a year.
Donning the batsuit
He had two commercial successes in 1995, co-starring with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in the crime drama Heat and Batman Forever.
The instalment in the franchise was received tepidly by critics, and Kilmer was upstaged by co-stars Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey.
Kilmer pulled out of the next Batman movie.
Director Joel Schumacher called Kilmer "the most psychologically troubled human being I've ever worked with."
Kilmer talked about his experience in the suit during his documentary.
"It was a struggle for me to get a performance past the suit, and it was frustrating until I realised that my role in the film was just to show up and stand where I was told to," he said.
Directors defend star
His next projects were the film version of the 1960s TV series The Saint — fussily putting on wigs, accents and glasses — and The Island of Dr. Moreau with Marlon Brando, which became one of the decade's most infamously cursed productions.
John Frankenheimer, the director who finished The Island of Dr. Moreau, said there were two things he would never do: ?Climb Mount Everest and work with Val Kilmer again.?
Other artists came to his defence, like DJ Caruso, who directed Kilmer in The Salton Sea and said the actor simply liked to talk out scenes and enjoyed having a director's attention.
?Val needs to immerse himself in a character. I think what happened with directors like Frankenheimer and Schumacher is that Val would ask a lot of questions, and a guy like Schumacher would say, 'You're Batman! Just go do it,'? Caruso told The New York Times in 2002.
The Saint director Phillip Noyce also called the reputation "unjustified".
"The real Val Kilmer is a lamb. And he is the hardest-working actor I've ever seen."
ABC/AP/Reuters
