Cher is paying tribute to ex-boyfriend Val Kilmer following the actor’s death from pneumonia. The “Top Gun” star, who battled throat cancer, died at age 65 on Tuesday.
“VALUS,” the “Turn Back Time” singer, 78, wrote via X on Wednesday. “Will miss u, U Were Funny, crazy, pain in the ass, GREAT FRIEND, kids [loved] U.”
The Oscar-winning actress also mentioned Kilmer’s performance as Mark Twain in the 2012 stage production “Citizen Twain,” as well as the “Top Gun” star’s lengthy battle with throat cancer.
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“BRILLIANT as Mark Twain,” Cher added. “BRAVE here during ur sickness.”
Kilmer’s death comes eight years after the “The Doors” actor confirmed his throat cancer diagnosis.
“He was probably trying to help me cause press probably asked where I was these days, and I did have a healing of cancer, but my tongue is still swollen [although] healing all the time,” he said in April 2017. “Because I don’t sound my normal self yet people think I may still be under the weather.”
Three years later, in his 2020 memoir “I’m Your Huckleberry,” Kilmer said that Cher supported him amid his health woes.
“One night, I suddenly awoke vomiting blood that covered the bed like a scene out of ‘The Godfather.’ I prayed immediately, then called 911. Then alerted my hostess. Cher stepped in and stepped up,” Kilmer wrote, according to People.
“And yet even in my grave condition, I saw her scanning the paramedic, who was Gregory Peck drop-dead handsome. Only in Hollywood, right?” he continued. “Despite the fact that I was covered in blood, I caught her eye and bounced my brows like Groucho Marx. Hubba Hubba.”
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“Cher was bashful to be busted but then couldn’t help laughing out loud at the audacity,” Kilmer added at the time. “Here we were, joking about beauty and desire, while I looked like a stuntman from Tarantino’s ‘Reservoir Dogs’ and, yes, while my life seemed to be in mortal danger.”
“We laughed out loud before they finished with my vitals and shut me up with an oxygen mask.”
Cher also discussed helping take care of Kilmer during an interview with People in 2021.
“He was at my house a lot of the time he was sick. He was brave the whole time,” she told the outlet. “I saw how sick he was. Once when the paramedics showed up after he was so sick and coughing up blood, he looked at me and I looked at him and we both knew what we were thinking.”
“Because those guys are so handsome,” the “Moonstruck” star continued. “When one of those paramedics comes to your house, you just know you’re going to see somebody who’s really cute.”
Cher and Kilmer met at a party in the early ’80s, becoming friends because they “laughed at the same things constantly.” They dated for two years before splitting in 1984.
“I was madly in love with Val Kilmer and he left, because sometimes you’re only meant to stay with someone for so long,” she told Howard Stern in Nov. 2024. “Val was really young.”
Kilmer also famously dated Carly Simon and Ellen Barkin before his marriage to Joanne Whalley.
He married the English actress in 1988, but the pair divorced in 1996 after eight years of marriage. They welcomed daughter Mercedes, 33, in 1991, and son Jack, 29, in 1995.
Kilmer was later linked to Cindy Crawford, Daryl Hannah and Angelina Jolie.
Cher, for her part, dated Kilmer’s “Top Gun” costar Tom Cruise when she was 39 and Cruise was 23. The singer’s current boyfriend, Alexander “AE” Edwards, 38, is a music exec and producer 40 years her junior.
Dozens of other Hollywood stars have since spoken out to pay tribute to Kilmer following his death, including Josh Brolin, Michael Douglas and Nicolas Cage.
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