Val Kilmer was “the coolest cat,” remembers his Top Gun co-star Barry Tubb.
In the 1986 hit that made Kilmer a star, Tubb played Wolfman, the wingman to Kilmer’s Iceman, and Tubb spoke to BBC News following Kilmer’s death this week aged 65.
Tubb told the BBC: “He was the coolest cat I’ve ever met. Not only did he have great acting chops, but he was funny as hell.”
The actor remembered goofing around on set between takes, with Kilmer using a personal video camera to make a personal record. Some of this footage was later included in his 2021 documentary Val, which charted his career and health challenges.
Tubb remembered: “He had the first video camera I’d ever seen. They got so tired of telling him to turn it off on the set of Top Gun that they finally just let it go.
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“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.”
Tubb told BBC News that the on-screen rivalry between Iceman and Maverick (Tom Cruise) and their respective wingmen Wolfman and Goose (Anthony Edwards) was reflected in the cast’s downtime, with Cruise distancing himself in preparation for his role, and the other actors “all at this beach hotel, riding motorcycles down hallways and things.”
Cruise and Kilmer remained friends in the following years, and the pair were reunited on screen for the sequel Top Gun: Maverick in 2022. Cruise paid tribute to Kilmer this week on stage at CinemaCon, asking for a moment’s silence to remember his co-star.
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