Hollywood legend Val Kilmer drew an outpouring of grief from friends and fans when he succumbed to pneumonia Tuesday at the age of 65.

His death came 11 years after he was diagnosed with throat cancer, triggering a traumatic battle with the illness that he initially concealed from the public.

Throughout his health struggles, he found solace in Christian Science, a 19th century American movement that teaches that diseases are caused by the mind and that prayer works best as a cure in lieu of medicine.

When he contracted cancer, Kilmer went along with his religion at first and pursued healing exclusively through worship, but he eventually relented for the sake of his children and underwent a tracheotomy, followed by chemotherapy and radiation.

He finally revealed his cancer battle to the public in 2017 – three years after his diagnosis – and credited ‘love’ and ‘prayer’ with his recovery.

Now DailyMail.com looks back on the beliefs Kilmer leaned on through his life…

Hollywood legend Val Kilmer triggered an outpouring of grief from friends and fans when he succumbed to pneumonia Tuesday at the age of 65; pictured 2019

The Church Of Christ, Scientist was launched in Boston in 1879 by Mary Baker Eddy, whom Kilmer reverently referred to as Mrs. Eddy.

‘Sickness is a belief, which must be annihilated by the divine Mind,’ Eddy wrote in the founding text of Christian Science. ‘Disease is an experience of so-called mortal mind. It is fear made manifest on the body.’

Read More Val Kilmer latest updates: Top Gun star revealed what helped him heal when he lost his voice before his death aged 65

During her lifetime, she was sharply criticized by another one of Kilmer’s heroes, Mark Twain – a detail Kilmer found so absorbing that he eventually developed a stage show about the feud between them. 

In a withering takedown of Christian Science, Twain wrote of its main text: ‘For of all the strange and frantic and incomprehensible and uninterpretable books which the imagination of man has created, surely this one is the prize sample.’ 

Although Christian Science does not ban modern medicine outright, it does discourage it, holding up prayer as a preferable alternative.

The belief system has proven consistently controversial down the decades – after Old Hollywood screen siren Jean Harlow died at 26 as a result of kidney failure in 1937, her legacy was clouded by a persistent flurry of false rumors that her Christian Scientist mother had refused to let her see a doctor.

Kilmer was born in 1959 and raised in the Los Angeles suburbs by Christian Scientist parents, whose religion he held onto throughout his own life. 

His faith proved a comfort to him as he dealt with his grief over his epileptic younger brother Wesley, who was just 15 when he drowned in a H๏τ tub.

Kilmer was first diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014, and by the following year, rumors began swirling about his having the condition; pictured in January 2014

In defiance of his spiritual convictions, he had surgery for the sake of his son Jack, 29, and daughter Mercedes, 33, who are pictured together at Cannes in 2021 

He claimed that when he was 24, he had a vision of the Angel Of Life wrenching his heart out and inserting a larger one in its place.

Kilmer was first diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014, and by the following year, rumors began swirling about his having the condition.

But only in 2017, during an Ask Me Anything session with fans on Reddit, did he finally reveal to the public that he had experienced a ‘healing of cancer.’

It subsequently emerged that he underwent a tracheotomy, chemotherapy and radiation, in defiance of his spiritual convictions.

Afterwards, he had to use a tracheostomy tube and a feeding tube and had trouble speaking, with a voice he joked made him laugh ‘like a pirate.’

In 2023, he shared that when he first discovered he had cancer, his plan was to work with his Christian Scientist pracтιтioner – a provider of healing prayer – to make his body stop ‘outwardly’ suffering ‘what can be diagnosed as a malady.’

He changed his mind because of his daughter Mercedes, 33, and his son Jack, 29, whom he had with his ex-wife and Willow co-star Joanne Whalley. 

Mercedes and Jack are not Christian Scientists and were apparently loath to watch their father simply let his illness take his course, so he agreed to have surgery.

‘I just didn’t want to experience their fear, which was profound,’ Kilmer told the New York Times. ‘I would’ve had to go away, and I just didn’t want to be without them.’ 

Kilmer is pictured in the 1989 movie Kill Me Again with Joanne Whalley, whom he welcomed both his children with during their marriage

Kilmer was born in 1959 and raised in the Los Angeles suburbs by Christian Scientist parents, whose religion he held onto throughout his own life; pictured 2005

Kilmer is pictured in the 1986 classic Top Gun in the role of Iceman, which he reprised in the film’s 2022 sequel Top Gun: Maverick

During the 2017 Reddit AMA when Kilmer first broke the news of his cancer battle, a fan asked what he would ‘want’ his ‘fans to know’ about his experience. 

Kilmer attributed his recovery to ‘prayer’ and ‘love’ and notably neglected to mention the operation – though he did praise his doctors for engaging in worship with him.

‘People that know I am a Christian Scientist make the ᴀssumption that I have somehow endangered myself,’ he observed. 

‘But many many people have been healed by prayer throughout recorded history. And many many people have died by whatever was modern medicine.’

He then recalled a conversation he had with Dr. Bernard Lown, who developed the current version of the cardiac defibrillator.

Kilmer said that he once asked Lown ‘the most important thing for a doctor to do when a patient fears for their life.’

Lown, according to Kilmer, ‘started to weep without his voice wavering and he leaned into me and said, “Fluff their pillow. That what I tell all the interns. LOVE. Love heals. More than any other skills, I urge them to LOVE the life they are entrusted to save.”‘

Kilmer is pictured in 1997 at the European Gala Charity Premiere of The Saint in London

Kilmer argued that Lown’s remarks on love are ‘at the heart of Mrs. Eddy’s understanding of the teachings of Jesus,’ adding that he himself had experienced ‘hearings thru relying solely on prayer’ even when he ‘didn’t believe.’

Love, he wrote, ‘was an unspeakable sense of universal support while I was briefly in the hospital. Even 2 of my doctors mentioned praying with me, for me.’

He added: ‘Sometimes people are surprisingly mean about this sort of talk. Maybe they mix it up in their minds with extremists. People screaming with signs in front of Planned Parenthood or something.’

Kilmer argued: ‘Thats not my sense of Christianity. Or most peoples regardless of their religion. Any more than a Muslim identified themselves with the madness of a suicide bomber spreading fear in the name of Allah…’