Val Kilmer has been making his rounds in the film industry for over 30 years, and is best known for stellar performances in Heat, Top Gun, Real Genius, The Doors, The Ghost and the Darkness, and Tombstone.
But you might not have known that the 57-year-old actor was diagnosed with stage 4 oral cancer several years ago and during a Q&A for The Ghost in the Darkness, his co-star Michael Douglas revealed that Kilmer was “dealing with exactly what I had and things don’t look good for him.”
But Kilmer did beat it and recently during a Reddit AMA (ask me anything), he revealed his secret for helping cure his cancer.
New York Daily News reports:
“People that know I am a Christian Scientist make the assumption that I have somehow endangered myself,” he wrote in a Reddit AMA Wednesday after a fan asked what he’d like to share about surviving cancer.
“But many many people have been healed by prayer throughout recorded history. And many many people have died by whatever was modern medicine.”
The 57-year-old ‘Top Gun’ actor also explained that he is an acquaintance of Dr. Bernard Lown, the inventor of the defibrillator, and that Lown relayed to him the same advice he gives to his interns: “If you’re worried about dying, remember that love heals.”
“(Lown) taught his students how to heal physical and mental challenges by understanding the immense power of love. I have seen people turn down love. I have turned it down myself when I was younger,” Kilmer wrote.
“I hope to never turn down love again. It was an unspeakable sense of universal support while I was briefly in the hospital. Even two of my doctors mentioned praying with me, for me.”
“He was probably trying to help me cause press probably asked where I was these days, and I did have a healing of cancer, but my tongue is still swollen (although) healing all the time,” he wrote at the time.
Kilmer was likely referring to his “The Ghost and the Darkness” co-star Michael Douglas, who inadvertently revealed Kilmer was going through a health crisis during a Q&A session.
Though Kilmer appears to be recovered, his family expressed concern with his methods when the cancer first appeared in 2015.
At the time, TMZ reported that relatives said Kilmer had known about a tumor for several months, but had failed to seek treatment for it because of his beliefs. In the Christian Science religion, followers trust prayer to heal them as opposed to medical treatment.
Most atheists would clearly disagree with his divine healing and probably chalk it up to being lucky.
People close to him were apparently extremely worried that he wouldn’t get the right medical treatment because of his Christian Science views.
But it worked, and he’s still here.
Kilmer also recounted his conversation with his doctor.
Breitbart reports:
Kilmer recounted his conversation with Lown, saying, “He started to weep without his voice wavering and he leaned into me and said, ‘Fluff their pillow.’
That’s 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. Well that’s what is at the heart of Mrs. Eddy’s understanding of the teachings of Jesus.”
The moral of the story is that God works in mysterious ways, and you never know what might happen if you just ask through prayer. Faith is everything.