In a Dec. 31 Instagram post featuring 20 photos of the actor \u2014\u00a0who died of pneumonia on April 1 <\/a>\u2014\u00a0Mercedes, 34, wrote, \u201cMy dad would have been 66 today, born on the last day of the fifties \u2764\ufe0f so grateful to all my friends for getting me through 2025.\u201d<\/p>\n Mercedes \u2014 whose mother is English actress Joanne Whalley<\/a>, 64, to whom Kilmer was wed from 1988 to 1996 \u2014 chose an array of photos featuring the Batman Forever actor through the years, from his childhood to Top Gun and beyond.<\/p>\n She also included photos of Kilmer and Whalley on the set of the 1988 movie Willow \u2014 the film where they met \u2014 and what appears to be a photo from their wedding day. (Kilmer and Whalley also welcomed son Jack, now 30, during their marriage.)<\/p>\n Mercedes Kilmer\/Instagram<\/p>\n Val Kilmer and Joanne Whalley.<\/p>\n Mercedes, a singer and actress, enjoyed a close relationship with her father. “My dad is such a smart and creative person that I love hanging out with, even if he wasn’t my dad, too,” she told PEOPLE in 2020<\/a>, the year they costarred in the movie Paydirt.<\/p>\n The movie came three years after Kilmer publicly disclosed that he had been diagnosed with throat cancer. He underwent a tracheotomy that altered his voice and returned to acting with Paydirt, playing a sheriff with a speech disability.<\/p>\n \u201cMy dad is so talented, and he\u2019s able to artfully circumvent the limitations of his speech,\u201d Mercedes told PEOPLE. \u201cI learned so much watching him, like how he communicated physically. It expanded what I thought acting was.\u201d<\/p>\n Mercedes Kilmer\/Instagram<\/p>\n Val Kilmer.<\/p>\n Kilmer, in turn, praised Mercedes and Jack, calling them “brilliant.”<\/p>\n “I am just madly, wildly entertained by them,” he told PEOPLE. “My only gripe is that I never see them enough, so I never get enough of the wild entertainment that everyone else gets, but they’re really, really, entertaining.”<\/p>\n Paramount\/courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n Val Kilmer, Rick Rossovich and Tom Cruise in ‘Top Gun.’<\/p>\n Kilmer made his final on-screen performance in 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick, reprising his role as Tom “Iceman” Kazansky, the rival-turned-friend of Tom Cruise’<\/a>s Pete “Maverick” Mitchell.<\/p>\n He made his last public appearance in 2019 alongside Mercedes at the annual Thespians Go Hollywood Gala at Avalon Hollywood.<\/p>\n![\"Mercedes](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/dbe6b4cbad9422c40409c8b633fd56f4.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"Mercedes](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/49aa30595140cc143635bf0ad610aadb.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"Paramount\/courtesy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/39c98de1f67c6b702b92d11f4ea7ed80.jpeg\"\/)
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