Film Star Who Played Batman and Jim Morrison, Val Kilmer, Dies at the age of 65

 Val Kilmer was a homegrown Hollywood actor who tasted leading-man stardom as Jim Morrison and Batman, but whose protean gifts and elusive personality also made him a high-profile supporting player, died on Tuesday in Los Angeles at the age of 65.

A wide-ranging leading man who earned praise, he was known to be charismatic but unpredictable. At one point he dropped out of Hollywood for a decade.

He gave a vividly stylized performance as Jim Morrison, the frontman for the rock group the Doors and an emblem of psychedelic sensuality, in Oliver Stone’s “The Doors” in 1991, and he played the cameo role of Mentor — an advice-giving Elvis as imagined by the film’s antiheroic protagonist, played by Christian Slater — in “True Romance” 1993, a violent drug-chase caper written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Tony Scott.