Val Kilmer Steps Out Looking Healthy While Preparing to Film Top Gun 2 After Battle with Cancer
Val Kilmer was spotted looking happy and healthy while out to lunch with his daughter Mercedes this week.
The 58-year-old actor was smiling as he chatted with his 26-year-old daughter while sporting a light pink button up shirt and dark grey shorts. Kilmer is currently filming Top Gun: Maverick with pal Tom Cruise, a sequel to the 1986 classic.
Earlier this summer, Cruise gave an update on his friend and costar while promoting Mission: Impossible — Fallout in Paris, where he said it was “special” getting to work with Kilmer again. “He’s doing really well,” Cruise told Extra.
Kilmer’s comeback role in the film comes after what has been a mysterious Hollywood hiatus for the actor. After years of rumored health problems, he finally opened up about his battle with throat cancer during a December 2017 interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
Video: Val Kilmer Reuniting With Tom Cruise for 'Top Gun 2'
His health issues first became apparent in January 2015, when a spokesperson told PEOPLE that he was rushed to the hospital “for a possible tumor.” Soon after, he took to Facebook to deny having a tumor, saying only that he “had a complication.”
Further rumors were repeatedly shut down by Kilmer, who was spotted out with a tracheostomy tube in October 2015 and then without it the next February.
Kilmer finally opened up about his cancer recovery to The Hollywood Reporter in December in an interview alongside his children with his ex-wife Joanne Whalley: Mercedes and Jack, 22.
The article revealed that the actor’s two-year fight with throat cancer had “taken its toll” on the family and noted that Kilmer had undergone a procedure on his trachea which made his voice raspy and left him short of breath.
On Wednesday, Paramount Studios announced the anticipated sequel release date was pushed back one year to June 26, 2020, according to USA Today.
The film was originally slated to premiere in July 2019 and began filming earlier this spring with plans to resume in the fall.
