Photographer Sarah Mei Herman was 20 when her half-brother Jonathan was born – she spent the next two decades capturing intimate moments between him and their father

Kilmer, who has died aged 65, made his name with Top Gun and The Doors – but his exceptional talents were often under-appreciated by the mainstream film industry

• Val Kilmer, star of Top Gun and The Doors, dies aged 65
• A life in pictures

Why do some movie careers take off … and others go a bit sideways? Val Kilmer was a smart actor, a looker, a terrific screen presence and in later years an under-appreciated comic performer. His finest hour as an actor came in Shane Black’s comedy action thriller Kiss Kiss Bang Bang in 2005, when he was quite superb as the camp private investigator Gay Perry Shrike: a gloriously sleek, plump performance which was transparently – and outrageously – based on Tom Ford. If only Kilmer could have started his acting life with that bravura performance, and shown the world what he could do. Instead, and at a crucial stage in his career, he was trapped in the body and face of a staggeringly beautiful young man.

He could somehow never quite persuade Hollywood to accept him as a leading man and above-the-title player in the mould of his Top Gun contemporary Tom Cruise, who in 1986 played Pete “Maverick” Mitchell to Val Kilmer’s Tom “Iceman” Kazansky. As the 80s and 90s rolled by, Kilmer never ascended to the league of Cruise, Hanks, Clooney and Pitt. Medication for the illness he latterly suffered can’t have helped, and it is a great sadness that fate never allowed him to mature in the same way as, say, Kurt Russell.

Prof Hannah Fry examines the kitchen phenomenon in her fascinating tech series. Plus: Rose Ayling-Ellis’s emotional signing project. Here’s what to watch this evening

8pm, BBC Two
Yet another show about the air fryer – but it’s OK, because this time it’s to kick off the brilliant Prof Hannah Fry’s third tech series, in which she examines seemingly ordinary objects in “obscene detail”. And this isn’t about just recipes. Fry – a self-confessed convert – traces the origins of the kitchen phenomenon back to the “accidental creation of a ‘wonder wire’” in the 1900s and one first world war pilot’s need for a hot dinner. Hollie Richardson

Director Kevin O’Hare announces staging of NYCB choreographer Peck’s 2014 piece, as well as new works by Akram Khan and Cathy Marston

A ballet by one of New York’s hottest choreographers, set to the music of Sufjan Stevens, and Akram Khan’s first work for the Royal Opera House stage are two highlights of the Royal Ballet’s 2025-26 season, announced on Wednesday. They will be seen alongside the first commission for a UK company from choreographic duo Paul Lightfoot and Sol León, premieres from Wayne McGregor and Cathy Marston and a new ballet based on Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man, with live music by John Grant.

“It’s about working with new voices, looking for what we haven’t experienced and what’s important to see,” said artistic director Kevin O’Hare about what will be his 14th season in charge of the company.

Known for his roles in Batman Forever, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and Tombstone, the prolific actor’s cause of death was pneumonia

Val Kilmer, the actor best known for his roles in Top Gun, Batman Forever and The Doors, has died at the age of 65.

His daughter Mercedes told the New York Times that the cause of death was pneumonia. Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014 and later recovered, after treatment with chemotherapy and trachea surgery that had reduced his vocal capability.

The US-Canadian dual citizen speculates he may be ‘barred or put in jail to sleep on a cement floor’ after his European tour, after years of speaking against Trump

Neil Young has shared his concerns of being barred from the US after his European tour later this year, thanks to his outspoken critiques of Donald Trump.

On Tuesday, on his website Neil Young Archives , the 79-year-old musician – who has dual Canadian-American citizenship – wrote of his fears after the recent spate of people being detained and deported upon entering the US. These incidents have been credited to vague or unspecified visa issues, but have frequently affected individuals who have criticised the Trump administration either publicly or in messages on their phone read by immigration officers.

It’s impossible to dislike Joe Swash. But his utterly chaotic approach to looking after five kids turns this reality show into a nightmarishly stressful watch

Oh man. I really thought this was going to be the one. I thought Stacey & Joe, the new reality show starring Stacey Solomon and Joe Swash and their 800 children (five) would let me escape and forget the troubles of the world. Because I like Joe Swash (for it is impossible to dislike Joe Swash. I mean, disliking Joe Swash is not a thing. You won’t. You can’t.) and I absolutely love Stacey Solomon. Her wit, kindness, radiant energy and endless charisma, plus her ability to bring order out of chaos in Sort Your Life Out heals something deep in my soul.

So I was greatly looking forward to seeing them all live in their gorgeous, fully storage-solutioned house in Essex, a peek into a life running – unlike mine – along well-ordered lines, with a place for everything and everything in its place.

Irish publisher receives award for small presses for Gaëlle Bélem’s There’s a Monster Behind the Door

Irish publisher Bullaun Press has won the Republic of Consciousness prize for small presses with the book There’s a Monster Behind the Door by Gaëlle Bélem, translated from French by Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert.

There’s a Monster Behind the Door is a “rollicking, sardonic picaresque”, said judge Houman Barekat. “The novel has important things to say about colonialism and society, but it’s also tremendous fun – darkly funny, acerbic, energetic.”

After Mark O’Sullivan’s My Sexual Abuse: The Sitcom helped him move past his childhood trauma, he’s launched a tearful, joyful new show – about creativity’s power to rebuild lives

Mark O’Sullivan is still buzzing from winning a Royal Television Society (RTS) award for his documentary, My Sexual Abuse: The Sitcom . “I’m grinning like a mid-party Michael Gove,” he chuckles. “It’s lovely for it to be recognised as an important and powerful piece. I just got a message from someone I knew years ago to say they’d seen the news about the award, watched the show and finally felt able to say they were also abused. That moved me to tears. Again!”

Comedian and writer O’Sullivan – co-star of cult Channel 4 sitcom Lee & Dean and creator of ITV teen drama Tell Me Everything – is now launching the weekly podcast Making Lemonade. It explores the healing power of creating something positive out of negative experiences, after his own life was radically transformed by his deeply personal film, confronting the abuse he suffered as a child. When he was 12, O’Sullivan began to be sexually assaulted by a member of his extended family. He reported it to the police when he was in his 30s. The culprit was convicted, imprisoned and has since died. Last May’s Channel 4 documentary followed O’Sullivan’s attempt to make mirth from what he endured, by creating an 18-minute TV comedy about his experiences, which was available online on Channel 4. It made for audacious TV, by turns heartbreaking and darkly hilarious.