The Husky@Mr_Husky1
A 22-year-old unknown actor walked into a birthday party in 1982 and caught the eye of one of the most famous women on the planet and what happened next lasted over four decades, long past the romance and all the way to the very end of his life.
His name was Val Kilmer. He was lanky, funny, and almost completely unknown. Cher was 36, a global superstar, and the host of the party her friend was throwing for her. A mutual friend had arranged the introduction, telling Cher that she thought either she or a friend of hers would like this young actor.
They started laughing together immediately.
They became friends first. They spent a week just talking before they kissed. When they finally did, Cher later said she thought her head would shoot right off her body.
The romance that followed was intense, joyful, and full of private jokes only they understood. The 14-year age gap raised eyebrows in Hollywood. They did not care. They gave each other nicknames he was Sid, she was Ethel — so that they could call to each other in public without being overheard. They also called themselves Valus Maximus and Cherus Reprimandus, which tells you everything about how they operated. Cher later said he was like nobody she had ever known. Exasperating and hysterical. Thrilling and funny. A person who simply did not do what anyone else did.
They parted in 1984. Val called it off. Years later, Cher told Howard Stern that Val Kilmer was the only ex of hers who had ever broken up with her. She said she was madly in love with him and he left. She never forgot it.
But the friendship never left.
Thirty years after their romance ended, Val Kilmer was fighting throat cancer. He had first noticed something wrong in 2014. By 2015 the full reality of it had arrived — the hospitalization, the tracheotomy, the chemotherapy, the permanent damage to the voice that had once commanded every room he walked into. He moved into Cher's guest house.
One night, he woke up vomiting blood. He wrote later that it covered the bed like a scene from a film. He prayed. He called 911. Then he alerted his hostess. Cher stepped in and stepped up. She was there for every hard day that followed.
He wrote about her in his 2020 memoir. He called her the funniest woman he ever met. He said that once Cher worked her way inside your head and heart, she never left. He said their spirits had stayed united even when their paths diverged. In his final years, when speaking required effort and every public appearance was an act of courage, he knew there was one person who would still pick up the phone no matter where she was or what she was doing.
Val Kilmer died on April 1, 2025. He was 65 years old. The cause was pneumonia. His daughter, Mercedes, confirmed it to the press.
Cher posted her tribute that same week. She called him brave. Funny. Brilliant. A great friend and a pain in the neck. She signed it with his nickname. Valus. Not Val. Not Mr. Kilmer. Valus. The name she had given him back in 1982 when they were young and electric and absolutely sure that the best thing in any room was each other.
Some loves don't become marriages. Some loves become something more permanent than that — a person who shows up with no conditions attached, who sits beside you in the dark and doesn't flinch, who still uses your old nickname when everyone else has moved on.
Val Kilmer and Cher gave that to each other for over forty years.
Share this with someone who has loved someone that way.
