Entertainment
Legendary actor Val Kilmer dies at 65
Prolific American actor Val Kilmer, who was propelled to fame with “Top Gun” and went on to starring roles as Batman and Jim Morrison, has died at age 65, the New York Times reported Tuesday.
The cause of death was pneumonia, his daughter Mercedes Kilmer told the Times. He had battled throat cancer following a 2014 diagnosis, but later recovered, she said.
AFP has reached out to his representatives for comment.
Originally a stage actor, Kilmer burst onto the big screen full of charisma, cast as a rock star in Cold War spoof “Top Secret!” in 1984.
Two years later, he gained fame as the cocky, if mostly silent fighter pilot in training Tom “Iceman” Kazansky in box office smash hit “Top Gun,” playing a rival to Tom Cruise’s “Maverick.”
A versatile character actor whose career spanned decades, Kilmer toggled between blockbusters and smaller-budget independent films. He got a shot at leading man status in Oliver Stone’s “The Doors,” depicting Jim Morrison’s journey from a psychedelics-loving LA film student to 60s rock frontman.
After a cameo in Quentin Tarantino-written “True Romance,” Kilmer went on to star alongside Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in “Heat” and took a turn as the masked Gotham vigilante in “Batman Forever,” between the Bruce Wayne portrayals by Michael Keaton and George Clooney.
A 1996 Entertainment Weekly cover story dubbed Kilmer “The Man Hollywood Loves to Hate,” depicting him as a sometimes surly eccentric with exasperating work habits.
A New York Times interviewer in 2002 said Kilmer “hardly lives up to that reputation” and found the actor instead “friendly, buoyant and so open that he often volunteers personal details about his life and is quick to laugh at himself.”
“You have to learn to speak Val,” director D. J. Caruso told the newspaper.– ‘ Magical life’ –Born Val Edward Kilmer on New Year’s Eve 1959, he began acting in commercials as a child.
Kilmer was the youngest person ever accepted to the drama department at New York’s fabled Juilliard school, and made his Broadway debut in 1983 alongside Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon.
In Hollywood, the Los Angeles native longed to make serious films but found himself in a series of schlocky blockbusters and expensive flops in the early 2000s.
Chastened by a decade or more of low-budget movies, he was mounting a comeback in the 2010s with a successful stage show about Mark Twain that he hoped to turn into a film when he was struck by cancer.
“Val,” an intimate documentary about Kilmer’s stratospheric rise and later fall in Hollywood, premiered at the Cannes film Festival in 2021 and showed him struggling for air after a tracheotomy.
Kilmer “has the aura of a man who was dealt his cosmic comeuppance and came through it,” US publication Variety wrote of the film.
“He fell from stardom, maybe from grace, but he did it his way.”When he reprised his role as “Iceman” in the long-awaited sequel “Top Gun: Maverick,” Kilmer’s real-life health issues,and rasp of voice,were written into the character.“
Instead of treating Kilmer — and, indeed, the entire notion of Top Gun — as a throwaway nostalgia object, he’s given a celluloid swan song that’ll stand the test of time,” GQ wrote.
On his website, Kilmer said he had led a “magical life.”
“For more than half a century, I have been honing my art, no matter the medium. Be it literature, movies, poetry, painting, music, or tracking exotic and beautiful wildlife,” he wrote.
According to the Times, he is survived by two children, Mercedes and Jack Kilmer.
AFP
Entertainment
Nollywood actress Atinuke Kareem dies of breast cancer
In the release signed by the state Public Relations Officer, Femi Solaja, on behalf of Ajasa, the association expressed deep appreciation to colleagues, fans, and well-wishers who provided financial and moral support during the actress’s medical battle.
Image credit : WhatsApp
The Theatre Arts and Motion Pictures Practitioners Association of Nigeria (TAMPAN) Ogun State Chapter, has announced the death of Nollywood actress Atinuke Kareem.
She died as a result of breast cancer.
The news of her passing was officially announced on Tuesday by her colleague and the Executive Governor of TAMPAN Ogun State, Owolabi Ajasa, via an official statement posted on his Instagram page.
The statement was accompanied by a video clip of Kareem seeking support and prayers during her battle with breast cancer, highlighting the physical toll of the illness on her.
“I’m a breast cancer patient. It has been going on for a while. My family has spent a lot of money; I’ve come to seek help. The association I belong to, TAMPAN, has tried too, but it’s not enough,” Kareem said in the video.
” Don’t allow me to die this way; I have two young children. Nigerians, please help me with any amount you can use to help.”
In the release signed by the state Public Relations Officer, Femi Solaja, on behalf of Ajasa, the association expressed deep appreciation to colleagues, fans, and well-wishers who provided financial and moral support during the actress’s medical battle.
Entertainment
Dolly Parton Buried By Husband’s Grave In Private Cemetry
“Because she couldn’t have kids of her own, she always made us feel like we were hers. She loved us that way, and I’ll forever be grateful for that.”
Country music legend Dolly Parton has been laid to rest in a private ceremony at a Nashville cemetery where her husband, Carl Dean, was buried last year.
The singer was interred on Friday at Woodlawn Memorial Park, following a small service held in accordance with her wishes, according to a remembrance shared by her great-niece, Lainey Parton.
“This is a really hard post for me to make. I wanted to wait until after my granny was laid to rest yesterday before I tried to put any of this into words,” Lainey wrote on social media.
She said that Parton had always treated her extended family as her own, adding that the singer’s absence would be deeply felt.
“Because she couldn’t have kids of her own, she always made us feel like we were hers. She loved us that way, and I’ll forever be grateful for that.”
Lainey also reflected on her personal relationship with the country star.
“I feel incredibly lucky that I got to call her my granny. Thank you for always believing in me, loving me, and making me feel like I could do anything,” she said.
Legendary country singer, songwriter and actor Dolly Parton, known for such chart-topping hits as “Jolene,” “I Will Always Love You” and “9 to 5,” died Tuesday at the age of 80, according to a social media video announcement by her nephew Brian Seaver.
Parton, who had many hits on the country charts and on the Billboard Hot 100, was also a celebrated actress, starring in “9 to 5” alongside Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda, “Rhinestone” alongside Sylvester Stallone and in 1989’s “Steel Magnolias,” which won a People’s Choice Award in 1990.
Among Parton’s accolades include 10 Grammys, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, an Emmy, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, an honorary award given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She sold over 100 million records worldwide, according to her website, and worked with artists such as Willie Nelson, Miley Cyrus, Kris Kristofferson, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt and, to great success, Kenny Rogers.
In recent years, Parton had been renowned for her philanthropy, using her net worth to promote literacy throughout poorer sections of the United States, including through proliferate book-giving and donations through the Dollywood Foundation and Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. She was recently reported to have given away her 100 millionth book to the Library of Congress.
“Inspiring kids to love to read became my mission. In the beginning, my hope was simply to inspire the children in my home county, but here we are today with a worldwide program that gives a book a month to well over 3 million children,” Parton said of the library’s mission.
“Before he passed away, my Daddy told me the Imagination Library was probably the most important thing I had ever done. I can’t tell you how much that meant to me because I created the Imagination Library as a tribute to my Daddy,” she said.
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