Val Kilmer speaks candidly about his throat cancer survival in new Amazon Prime documentary

Six years ago she was diagnosed with throat cancer.

And, Val Kilmer, 61 – who is now cancer-free – speaks candidly about surviving throat cancer in his new Amazon Prime documentary, Val.

After radiation and chemotherapy treatments, as well as a tracheostomy that permanently damaged his speaking voice, the actor explained, “You have to make the choice to breathe or to eat.”

In the documentary, his voice hoarse, Val insists, “Now that it’s harder to speak, I want to tell my story more than ever.

“I obviously sound a lot worse than I feel. I can’t speak without plugging this hole [in his throat]. ‘

The actor, who now takes his meals through a feeding tube, explains: “You have to make the choice to breathe or to eat. It is a very present obstacle in who sees me.

To Val, Kilmer says he has no regrets and admits, “I am blessed,” saying: “I behaved strangely with some. I don’t deny any of this and have no regrets because I lost and regained parts of myself that I didn’t know existed.

The film is co-directed by Leo Scott and Ting Poo and produced by Val and his two adult children.

“We approached him three years ago,” Scott told PEOPLE. “I had worked with him on his Cinema Twain project and when he couldn’t shoot the play Citizen Twain he would shoot a movie of the play, so I worked with him on this project and others as well, archiving his footage. . ‘

Poo noted, “He doesn’t have the vanity you would expect from someone of his fame and fame. There has never been this kind of artifice or protection that people who are really famous have to put in place around them. It’s humiliating to be around that.

Val’s son, Jack, 26, provides the voiceover narration for the documentary, but its lines were written by Val himself, who survived severe throat cancer a few years ago.

In a recent Deadline interview about the film, Jack recalled how his father always made sure to record footage of his life over the years.

“We had the camera on all the time, with dad taking pictures and videos. We never saw any of the footage, ”Jack said.

“He would continue to create, boxes and boxes. At one point we said to ourselves: ‘That’s enough, what are all these tapes for?’

“They all built up in this safe that Leo went through for years,” Jack noted in reference to co-director Leo Scott.

Val’s daughter Mercedes, 29, shared her own memories: “We were so bored that he filmed us all the time.

“And then I remember being about 12 years old and realizing what he was doing and saying, ‘Oh, he’s a filmmaker. “”

Val shares Jack and Mercedes with his Willow co-star Joanne Whalley, 60, who he was married to from 1988 until their divorce in 1996.

Val is now streaming on Prime Video.