Critics of conventional medicine
Why Val Kilmer denied his cancer for a long time
Why Val Kilmer denied his cancer for a long time
02.04.2025, 6:39 p.m.
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Val Kilmer suffered from larynx cancer. However, he denied his diagnosis for a long time. For religious reasons, the “Top Gun” star encountered illness and death in a special and dangerous way.
Actor Val Kilmer, who celebrated his big breakthrough in 1986 with the action film “Top Gun”, died of pneumonia at the age of 65. His history of illness, however, started ten years ago – which he saw differently.
Since 2014 there has always been speculation about cancer in Kilmer. A diagnosis that he himself denied for a long time. In 2015, after a hospital stay, he contradicted rumors about his state of health on Facebook: “I had neither a tumor nor a tumor surgery or any operation.” A year later, his friend and colleague Michael Douglas, with whom he turned “the spirit and the darkness” in 1996, told the press that Kilmer would suffer from exactly the same illness that had also been diagnosed with him. “Val is a wonderful guy who now has the same thing I had, and it doesn’t look so good for him. I pray for him,” said the Oscar winner, in which a tumor was found on the tongue root in 2010. Kilmer denied this and claimed that he had a knot in his throat and a swollen tongue, but “no cancer”.
It was only two years after the first rumors Kilmer admitted his cancer in a question and answer session at Reddit by saying that he was healed.
The public dealings with his illness had to do with his belief: Val Kilmer was a supporter of the religious community “Christian science”, in which healing through trust in God and not through conventional medicine. In an interview with the “New York Times”, Kilmer explained in 2020 according to “Entertainment Tonight” that in his faith a diagnosis was more of a claim than a fact.
Originally, the actor had also planned not to undergo traditional treatment and instead to counter cancer with the help of his faith. This plan only changed because of his now adult children Jack and Mercedes. “I just didn’t want to experience their fear, which was very great,” said Kilmer. “I should have left and I just didn’t want to be without her.”
“Wunder healing”
This was followed by operations, chemotherapy and radiation, as a result of which he needed an air pipe cut and a nutritional probe. Although Kilmer’s doctors considered his treatments to be successful, the actor believed that his faith and prayer had healed him and the treatments had harmed him. “This comes from radiation and chemotherapy. That doesn’t come from cancer,” he said, for example, about his tracheal cannula. “This ‘treatment’ caused my suffering.” Kilmer wrote in his memoirs published in 2019 in “I’m Your Huckleberry” that he was free of cancer for over four years and described his recovery as “miracle healing”.
Thanks to his faith, Kilmer was not afraid of death: “Someone comes to you and says you only have to live four months and the concept of time is a human concept. If you describe the divine concept of time, there is none.”
