I had been trying to write a Val Kilmer story for years, and he would never say yes to it.

And finally, he said yes. I don't know why I was so lucky to have him say yes at that moment, but I know what he would say.

I know that he would say that it wasn't luck, that it was my faith.

These people, you write about them, and you become associated with them forever.

And you don't even know what a privilege that's going to be years and years later.

I'm Taffy Brodesser Echner, and I'm a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine.

The actor Val Kilmer died on Tuesday in Los Angeles at the age of 65.

And for the Sunday read this week, we are once again airing the profile I wrote of Val in 2020 during a pandemic.

Everyone has a favorite Val Kilmer that feels very personal and specific to them.

In Top Gun, in Heat, in The Doors, in Batman Forever. He was the kind of actor

who was always running from his good looks, even as he greatly benefited from them. I could not

believe his jaw when I met him, same as I couldn't believe it in a

movie theater when I was 12 years old. In 2014, he was diagnosed with throat cancer, and he chose

not to treat it medically, but through prayer and counseling on his faith. He was a Christian

scientist. Eventually, his children begged him to seek medical intervention, and he finally did.

And when I met him, he had had a tracheostomy. He was speaking by covering up the hole in his throat. And he was still performing. What does somebody do when the thing that they are known for, which is being a superhero, which is being an action hero, which is being handsome, which is being this sort of picture of good health and vigor,

what do you do next? And a lot of people, they fade away. But that's not how it went for Val.

All of the vocal exercises he'd learned at Juilliard had come in handy because he was able to

figure out how to speak again in a way that he should not have been able to communicate,

but he was.

And the force of his will is the thing I remember about him, the force of his will, the fact that he was sure he was going to come back to his exact former self, and in some senses felt that he was, that he was all soul and all will.

And very often throughout the pandemic,

...