Kris Kristofferson, the country singer who ably balanced a prolific acting career alongside his music, has died aged 88.
Kristofferson’s family confirmed his death on Sunday night, saying he “passed away peacefully” at home on Saturday. “We’re all so blessed for our time with him,” read the statement, which was signed by his wife Lisa, his eight children and seven grandchildren. “Thank you for loving him all these many years, and when you see a rainbow, know he’s smiling down at us all.”
Admired for the grit, emotional vulnerability and literary craft of his country songwriting, Kristofferson frequently topped the US country charts and cover versions of his songs were hits for artists including Janis Joplin, Gladys Knight and Johnny Cash. In the mid-70s, he worked with film directors including Martin Scorsese and Sam Peckinpah, and won a Golden Globe for his work opposite Barbra Streisand in the 1976 remake of A Star is Born.
Streisand paid tribute to her co-star on Instagram, writing that he was a “special” and “charming” performer. “It was a joy seeing him receive the recognition and love he so richly deserved,” she wrote.
Dolly Parton, who performed duets with Kristofferson such as From Here to the Moon and Back, wrote: “What a great loss. What a great writer. What a great actor. What a great friend. I will always love you, Dolly.”
Country singer Reba McEntire wrote: “What a gentleman, kind soul, and a lover of words. I am so glad I got to meet him and be around him. One of my favourite people.”
Born in Texas in 1936, Kristofferson attended high school in California and initially wanted to be a novelist, later studying literature at Pomona college in southern California and at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. Inspired by the nascent rock’n’roll scene, his first foray into music was in the UK as Kris Carson, though the songs he recorded were never released.
He continued performing music during a spell in the US army, where he became a helicopter pilot, a skill he continued (in the oil industry and National Guard) after he left the forces in 1965 – angering his military family. “I took pride in being the best labour or the guy that could dig the ditches the fastest,” he later said. “Something inside me made me want to do the tough stuff … Part of it was that I wanted to be a writer, and I figured that I had to get out and live.”
He relocated to the country music hub of Nashville, where he worked as a bartender and as a janitor for Columbia Recording Studios. In the late 60s he wrote songs for Jerry Lee Lewis and country singers including Ray Stevens, Faron Young and Billy Walker, but his solo career faltered.
A breakthrough came after he landed a National Guard helicopter at Johnny Cash’s home and handed him a tape of his songs, later describing the incident as “kind of an invasion of privacy that I wouldn’t recommend”. Cash admired Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down and his recording of Kristofferson’s song topped the country chart in 1970 and won song of the year at the Country Music Association awards.
That year, Kristofferson recorded the first of 18 studio albums he would release during his career. He briefly dated Janis Joplin, who recorded his song Me and Bobby McGee, and it became a No 1 hit after her death in 1970. Another Kristofferson song from that year, Help Me Make It Through the Night, became a hit single for Sammi Smith and was later covered by Elvis Presley, Gladys Knight, Mariah Carey and others.
By the time his fourth album Jesus Was a Capricorn topped the country chart in 1972, the strikingly handsome Kristofferson had begun an acting career, first appearing in Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie. Further notable films include playing the outlaw Billy the Kid in Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), opposite Ellen Burstyn in Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974) and with Burt Reynolds in sports comedy-drama Semi-Tough (1977). A Star Is Born cemented his Hollywood success, but it was later undermined by Heaven’s Gate (1980), famously a box-office flop.
In 1979, Willie Nelson made a hit album of Kristofferson covers, and in 1982 the pair collaborated with Dolly Parton and Brenda Lee on a compilation of their mid-60s songs. In 1985, Kristofferson and Nelson formed another supergroup, the Highwaymen, with Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings. Their debut album, Highwayman, with its title track written by Jimmy Webb, returned Kristofferson to the top of the country charts.
In the 1980s, he was a vocal critic of US president Ronald Reagan and foreign policy in Central America, when the US funded combat against left-wing forces in El Salvador and Nicaragua. Kristofferson’s 1986 album Repossessed made reference to the conflicts.
His acting career, while consistent, was given a fillip in 1996 by playing villainous sheriff Charlie Wade in John Sayles’s acclaimed neo-western Lone Star alongside Chris Cooper and Matthew McConaughey. It led to prominent roles, including that of vampire hunter Abraham Whistler in three Blade movies, starring Wesley Snipes.
Kristofferson retired in 2021. His final film role was in the Ethan Hawke-directed drama Blaze (2018), and his most recent album was 2016’s The Cedar Creek Sessions.
He was married three times, first to Fran Beer in 1960. He married singer Rita Coolidge in 1973, and their duets album that year, Full Moon, became one of Kristofferson’s biggest hits, crossing over into the pop charts’ Top 30. They divorced in 1980. He is survived by his third wife, Lisa Meyers, whom he married in 1983 and had five children with, adding to three other children from his first two marriages.
