Val Kilmer’s co-stars recall pranks, parties and acting ‘artistry’

Val Kilmer is joking around in his trailer on the set of Top Gun, pretending to bark demands into a packet of More cigarettes as if it’s a phone and he’s talking to the studio boss.

“He wants more! More sex! More drugs! More wine! More tobacco! More headaches! More ulcers! More herpes! More women! And less of Tom Cruise!”

Co-stars Rick Rossovich and Barry Tubb, also on a break from playing the film’s elite fighter pilots, are in the trailer too, cracking up with laughter.

Rossovich, aka Cruise’s on-screen partner Slider, is apparently the person who wants “more”. Wearing shades but no shirt, he proceeds to pretend to throw a chair at Kilmer’s head, before jumping out of the trailer into the sunshine and dancing off.

Kilmer took his video camera everywhere to film behind the scenes, and picked these snapshots of the carefree tomfoolery on the Top Gun set in 1985 as the opening shots for a 2021 documentary about his life.

“He had the first video camera I’d ever seen,” recalls Tubb, who played Wolfman. “They got so tired of telling him to turn it off on the set of Top Gun that they finally just let it go.

“We had a fun time with it because we tried to catch everyone on the toilet with the video camera. That was our goofing around. So there’s video somewhere of everyone with the door open on the toilet. We were goofballs.”

He adds: “Cruise never hung out with us. It was all of us, except for Cruise. He was method acting as the loner, and we were all at this beach hotel, riding motorcycles down hallways and things.”

And Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson, “unlike some producers, threw parties every other night”, he says. “And so it was definitely in the air.”

Tubb is one of many former co-stars who have been fondly remembering Kilmer’s acting and his antics, following his death at the age of 65.

“He was the coolest cat I’ve ever met,” Tubb tells BBC News. “Not only did he have great acting chops, but he was funny as hell.”

Top Gun was a breakthrough for Kilmer, who played Iceman, the rival to Cruise’s hotshot Maverick at the US Navy’s academy for elite fighter pilots.

On screen, saving the USA from Soviet MiG jets was serious business. Off screen, filming in California and Nevada, things were less serious.

“As Sean Penn once said, working in Hollywood is like being in high school with money,” Tubb says.

“I was 22 years old, and I was the younger of the bunch.

“We had a deal that if one of us wanted to go to Mexico, all of us had to go. And Val had his van from high school, so we would all pile into Val’s van and go over to Mexico for dinner.

“We were young and bulletproof.”

Tubb whispered one of the film’s famous lines when the class watched a video of aerial dogfights: “This gives me a hard-on.”

That came about after he played a practical joke by switching the real tape in the academy’s VHS player for a pornographic video.

“[Director] Tony Scott heard me say that and he said, ‘Keep that in’. We were doing things like that. We were cutting up and having fun the whole time.”

Kilmer originally didn’t want to appear in the film, saying he throught the script was silly and he disliked its warmongering.

To the audition, he “wore oversize gonky Australian shorts in nausea green” in an attempt to put the producers off, he wrote in his autobiography.

“I read the lines indifferently. And yet, amazingly, I was told I had the part.”

The script contained “very little” substance to Iceman’s character, he said in his documentary.

“So I attempted to make him real. I manifested a backstory for him, where he had a father who ignored him, and as a result, was driven by the need to be perfect in every way. This obsession with perfection is what made him so arrogant.”

He added that he would “purposely play up the rivalry between Tom’s character and mine off screen” as well as on.

“What ended up happening is the actors, in true method fashion, split into two distinct camps.

“You had Maverick and Goose on one side, and Slider, Hollywood, Wolfman and me, Iceman, on the other.

“It was fun to play up the conflict between our characters, but in reality I’ve always thought of Tom as a friend, and we’ve always supported each other.”

By the time a sequel was finally shot in 2018 and 2019, Kilmer had suffered from throat cancer. He had a tracheotomy operation, affecting his voice and making it difficult to speak.

But Cruise was the one who insisted Iceman should return. The pair shared a highly emotional scene as Kilmer’s character, now an admiral, typed out part of his side of the conversation on a screen, before sharing a hug.

“Cruise couldn’t have been cooler,” Kilmer said. “Tom and I took up where we left off. The reunion felt great.”

Many of the cast had remained friends after the original film, Tubb says, and Rossovich’s home in the Hollywood Hills became the “Top Gun club house”.

“I remember going to Rick’s house and they were painting Rick’s kitchen, and Val got up on top of the refrigerator and did 20 minutes of Hamlet. Never missed a word.”

Kilmer was “an actors’ actor”, who raised the bar for the rest of the cast, Tubb says.

“He had a level of artistry that transcended the Hollywood norm.

“Val was a cool cat. Also, he could back it up. I remember seeing The Doors movie and I just saw Jim Morrison.

“His ability to disappear into characters was incredible. Same with Iceman.”

He adds: “Val, among his peers, was well loved. He came fully loaded.”

The love for Kilmer has shone through in the tributes from his fellow actors.

Kelly McGillis, who played Cruise’s love interest Charlie and starred with Kilmer in 1999’s At First Sight, told the BBC in a statement: “I need some time to process what Val has meant in my walk here on Earth.

“He was an enigmatic presence sprinkled here & there throughout my journey. A force with depth & weight which will take some time to sort out.

“There are just so many feelings at the moment.

“Gratitude being the first.”

English actor and dancer Will Kemp, who appeared alongside Kilmer in the 2004 slasher film Mindhunters, said the news of his death came as a “real shock”.

He recalls how the star had set him at ease and made him laugh with his “wicked sense of humour” when he was a nervous young actor on his first production.

“I entered into it with sort of trepidation really because I had heard all sorts of rumours about possible bad behaviour on set, and also he’s this acting legend that I’d grown up with.

“But Val was really sweet, fun, generous, but really, really unpredictable!”

His memories of his first ever big scene will forever be tied up with Kilmer.

“I have a very clear memory of the first scene that I shot that was in a helicopter, and we’re flying around with [director] Renny Harlin shouting, ‘why are we not shooting?’

“We’re halfway through take one, and Val – totally unscripted – somehow pulls out a cheeseburger and was just casually munching on it.

“He turns over to me and goes, ‘hey, is everybody having fun?’

“It just blew my mind.”

Kemp, also known for his portrayal of the Swan in Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake, admitted Kilmer’s acting methods on set sometimes appeared to be “crazy” while at other times there were “moments of absolute genius”.

He added: “He created so many iconic characters and was a real enigmatic movie star.”