Highlights

• Val Kilmer's ex-wife, Joanne Whalley, remained largely silent about his health struggles despite their tumultuous divorce.
• Whalley took a break from acting to raise their children.
• After experiencing financial difficulties during the divorce, Whalley is now financially stable.

Val Kilmer has been making headlines in recent years due to his health struggles. The actor's battle with throat cancer was the subject of the documentary Val (2021), and his cameo in the blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick (2022) is widely believed to be his last screen appearance due to his difficulty speaking.

Kilmer's kids have been vocal in their support for the actor, but his ex-wife, Joanne Whalley, has not spoken publicly on the matter. Kilmer and Whalley were married for nine years, but the personal and financial drama that defined their divorce led to a long-term falling out. Whalley is still a presence in Hollywood, but her lifestyle is very different than it was when she was raising kids with the former Batman star.

Joanne Whalley Returned To Acting Full-Time After Raising Her Kids With Val Kilmer

Joanne Whalley was a burgeoning star in the 1980s. She was nominated for a BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for the serial Edge of Darkness (1985), and she rose to international fame by appearing in the fantasy blockbuster Willow (1988). It was during the production of Willow that she met Val Kilmer, and the two actors would marry the same year.

Whalley would continue to be a Hollywood force throughout the 1990s, but the birth of her kids, Mercedes and Jack, in 1991 and 1995, respectively, slowed things down. According to The Telegraph, Whalley decided to step back from acting and focus on raising a family. This coincided with the peak of Val Kilmer's stardom.

Whalley reflected on her decision to semi-retire during a 2007 interview with The Telegraph:

"I can’t think of anything better to do than to have my kids. If I was career-orientated, I could say: 'Well, I could have done that…' But I don’t think like that at all. For me, being able to stay home with my kids is the biggest luxury in the world."

Once her kids got older, however, Whalley mounted a comeback. She began appearing in period dramas like The Borgias (2011-13) and Wolf Hall (2015), and she even resurfaced in mainstream Hollywood fare like Daredevil (2018) and Willow (2022), with the latter being a sequel TV show to Whalley's breakout film. Her last five projects include:

Whalley felt the need to reinvent herself as an actress since she was much older than when she initially arrived on the scene. She discussed the importance of reinvention during a 2010 interview with The Guardian:

"The worst thing for an actor is to be stuck in one kind of thing. But if you're not in people's faces all the time, you can lose traction. And that affects the choice of things you get offered."

Joanne Whalley Is Financially Stable After Claiming That She & Her Kids Were Briefly Homeless

Joanne Whalley's comeback has allowed for financial stability that escaped her during her divorce from Val Kilmer. She has an estimated net worth of $5 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth, and the outlet attributes most of this wealth to her acting career. Whalley made a respectable $7K per episode on the Willow series alone.

Whalley was in dire financial straits when she wasn't acting, however, and focusing on raising her children. She filed for divorce against Val Kilmer in 1995, and claimed the actor refused to provide adequate financial support despite being the primary earner in the family.

Whalley claimed, in official court documents, that Kilmer refused to put up money for a house, leaving her and their two children without a place to live. She also claimed that she was forced to stay with friends or put her children up at hotels while Kilmer was traveling to promote films like Batman Forever and Heat:

"Since Val will have earned some pounds 6,600,000 by the end of February his refusal to help cannot be for financial reasons... Both children are very young and as I am breast-feeding the baby it has been difficult to search for property either to rent or buy."

Kilmer offered Whalley $500,000 to settle out of court, but the divorce proceedings wore on for a year, and severely tarnished Kilmer's reputation within Hollywood. A deal was struck in 1996, with the courts ordering Kilmer to pay $4 million, in addition to monthly child support fees.

Whalley Is Proud That Both Of Her Kids Have Established Hollywood Careers

Joanne Whalley did not appear in the documentary Val, but she did encourage her children to play a role in its production. Her daughter Mercedes served as an executive producer on the doc, and her son Jack narrated. When asked why Joanne wasn't more involved with the doc, Mercedes told that it wouldn't have made narrative sense:

"It wouldn’t have made sense to have her be more involved, to have her occupy more of the film, because they’ve been divorced for 25 years, you know? So, she was included, I think, as much as it was appropriate."

Whalley also got the opportunity to work alongside her son Jack on the Willow series. She reprised her role as Sorsha from the 1988 film, and Jack voiced Madmartigan, the character originally played by Val Kilmer.

Joanne Whalley told Entertainment Weekly that the experience was fun and that it brought a maternal quality to her performance:

"Now, she has children of her own... [Sorsha has a] sense of social responsibility and leadership and justice, but she's still a mum who's a bit corny sometimes. She's still got a romantic side..."

Jack Kilmer has acted in several acclaimed films like Palo Alto (2013), The Nice Guys (2016) and The Giant (2019), while Mercedes Kilmer most recently appeared in Paydirt (2020) along with her father.

When asked about her children's individual success, Whalley told The Guardian that time had flown by, and she was pleased to see how they have matured over the years. "Kids have been a great clarifier, ­incredibly rewarding," she noted. "And it goes so fast."