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Val Kilmer is the subject of the upcoming documentary “Val”, which features the actor’s never-before-shared opinions of some of his most iconic film roles.
One of those is Iceman in “Top Gun”, a job that Kilmer said he was forced to do despite his reservations.
“Believe it or not, I didn’t want to do ‘Top Gun’ at first,” says Kilmer in the doc, as reported by Page Six. “I thought the script was silly, and I disliked warmongering in films. But I was under contract with the studio, so I didn’t really have a choice.”
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According to Kilmer, the animosity between Iceman and Tom Cruise’s Maverick wasn’t just onscreen, which was by design.
“I would purposely play up the rivalry between Tom’s character and mine offscreen as well,” Kilmer revealed. “And what ended up happening is the actors, in true Method fashion, split into two distinct camps. You had Maverick and Goose on one side, Slider, Hollywood, Wolfman and me, Iceman, on the other.”
In the film, Kilmer details his ongoing frustration with his career, with “Batman Forever” representing a low point.
“The kind of acting that I’m really interested in, I haven’t done very much in movies,” he says, admitting he realized he’d made a huge mistake the first time he put on the Batman costume.
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“When you’re in [the bat suit], you can barely move and people have to help you stand up and sit down. You also can’t hear anything and after a while people stop talking to you. It’s very isolating,” he says
“It was a struggle for me to get a performance past the suit, and it was frustrating until I realized my performance was just to show up and stand where I was told to,” Kilmer adds.
“Val” premieres in theatres on July 23 and debuts on Amazon Prime Video on Friday, Aug. 6.