Kurt Russell sat across from Val Kilmer three years before the actor’s death, watching a man who could barely speak but still had something to say. The visit was not a Hollywood photo op or a sentimental farewell arranged for cameras. It was two friends in a room, one of them struggling to form words after throat cancer had stolen his voice, the other listening with the patience of someone who knew the value of what was being offered.

“Sometimes I could have been a little bit nicer to a lot of people,” Kilmer told Russell, and then he laughed. Russell, now 75, has been in the business long enough to know the difference between a tribute and the truth. When the world asked him about Val Kilmer after his death on April 1, 2025, at age 65, Russell chose truth.

The friendship between Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer began on the set of “Silkwood” in 1983, when Kilmer was a 22-year-old Juilliard-trained newcomer who had come along with Cher. Russell, already a veteran of Disney films and John Carpenter classics, saw something immediate in the young man. “He was very serious about what he wanted to do,” Russell later told Rolling Stone.

That seriousness never left Kilmer, even as he became one of the most gifted actors of his generation. But it also made him difficult, a reputation that followed him through productions like “Batman Forever” and “The Island of Dr. Moreau.”

Directors called him impossible. Producers complained. Yet the performances kept coming, each one a revelation.

The bond between Russell and Kilmer deepened during the making of “Tombstone” in 1993, a film that nearly collapsed under its own troubled production. Russell effectively took over directing duties while playing Wyatt Earp, and Kilmer delivered the performance of a lifetime as Doc Holliday. The film became a classic, and the two men exchanged gifts that captured the essence of their characters.

Russell gave Kilmer a burial plot in Boot Hill, the historic Tombstone cemetery where outlaws and lawmen were buried. “Doc Holliday was all about death,” Russell explained. Kilmer, in return, gave Russell an acre of land overlooking that same graveyard.

“Wyatt Earp was all about life,” Russell said. “He gets to overlook everything.” Russell still owns that land today, holding onto it not for its value but for what it means.

The last time Russell saw Kilmer alive, the actor was living quietly, his voice reduced to a whisper after two tracheotomies and extensive radiation. But the humor and the clarity remained. Kilmer looked at his old friend and acknowledged his own flaws with a laugh, a moment of retrospective honesty that Russell has carried with him ever since.

“He was a good guy,” Russell said. “Everybody’s got their full 360 degrees of their person. Nobody gets out of here alive.

So I hope he rests in peace. If anybody deserves to rest in peace, it would be Val.”

Kilmer’s death from pneumonia, following years of recovery from throat cancer, brought an outpouring of tributes from across Hollywood. Tom Cruise, who had fought to include Kilmer in “Top Gun: Maverick,” called him a brilliant actor and a dear friend. But it was Russell’s tribute that cut deepest, not because it was polished or poetic, but because it was true.

He did not gloss over the complexity. He did not pretend the relationship was easy. He simply described a man he knew, the good and the complicated, the genius and the friction, the final visit and the six words that said it all.

Russell’s own career has been a study in reinvention. Born in 1951 to actor and former baseball player Bing Russell, he was a child star on “The Travels of Jamie McPheeters” at age 12, then a Disney contract player through the 1960s. He hated the box they put him in, but he bided his time, even playing minor league baseball until a shoulder injury ended that path.

The turn came in 1979 when John Carpenter cast him as Elvis Presley in a television film, a role that proved everyone wrong about him. From there, Russell became Snake Plissken in “Escape from New York,” MacReady in “The Thing,” and a Golden Globe nominee for “Silkwood.” He learned to take the craft seriously, just as Kilmer did.

When they finally worked together on “Tombstone,” the chemistry was electric. Kilmer’s Doc Holliday, with his drawl and his silver cup and his line “I’m your huckleberry,” became the soul of the film. Russell, as Wyatt Earp, anchored it with a quiet authority.

The film remains one of the finest Westerns ever made, and the friendship that came out of it lasted until the end. Russell has said that working with Kilmer was “absolutely great,” and he meant it, not as a polite eulogy but as a statement of fact.

The documentary “Val,” released in 2021, showed the full arc of Kilmer’s life, from the obsessive preparation for roles to the joy of performance to the pain of illness. His son Jack narrated, giving voice to a father who could no longer speak clearly. The film was raw and honest, much like the man himself.

In “Top Gun: Maverick,” Kilmer’s final scene with Cruise was a goodbye that transcended cinema. His voice was digitally altered, but the emotion was real. The world watched Iceman and Maverick make peace, and it felt like a farewell, which it was.

Now Russell sits with the memory of that last visit, with the acre of land overlooking Boot Hill, with the knowledge that Val Kilmer understood something deeper about life and death even back in 1993. “Doc Holliday was all about death, but Wyatt’s all about life,” Russell said. “I guess that pretty much says it all.”

The land is still there, a tangible reminder of a friendship that outlasted the reputation and the illness and everything else. It is one of the last things Russell has left to hold on to, and he will not let it go.

At 75, Kurt Russell has seen enough of Hollywood to know that most tributes are polished performances. He chose to give something else. He chose to tell the truth about a complicated man and an uncomplicated friendship.

He chose to remember the laugh, the apology, the gift of an acre with a view. And in doing so, he gave Val Kilmer the only tribute that mattered: the honest portrait of a man who was, in the end, a good guy.