Kris Kristofferson, singer-songwriter and actor, dies at 88 | National entertainment

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kris Kristofferson, a Rhodes scholar with a deft writing style and rugged charisma who became a country music superstar and a high-profile Hollywood actor, has died.

Kristofferson died Saturday at his home in Maui, Hawaii, family spokeswoman Ebie McFarland said in an email. He was 88.

McFarland said Kristofferson died peacefully surrounded by his family. No reason was given.

Beginning in the late 1960s, the Brownsville, Texas native wrote country and rock ‘n’ roll standards such as “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down,” “Help Me Make it Through the Night,” “For the Good Times” and “Me and Bobby McGee,” which became his best-known song as a posthumous hit for Janis Joplin.

He starred opposite Ellen Burstyn in Martin Scorsese’s 1974 film Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, opposite Barbra Streisand in 1976’s A Star Is Born, and starred opposite Wesley Snipes in Marvel’s Blade in 1998 “.

Kristofferson, who could recite the poems of William Blake by heart, wove folk music lyrics about loneliness and tender romance into popular country music. He represented a new generation of country songwriters alongside colleagues such as Willie Nelson, John Prine and Tom T. Hall.

“There is no better songwriter than Kris Kristofferson,” Nelson said at a BMI awards ceremony for Kristofferson in 2009.

Kristofferson retired from performing and recording in 2021 and only occasionally appeared on stage as a guest.

Nelson and Kristofferson joined forces with Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings to form the country supergroup The Highwaymen in the mid-1980s.

Kristofferson was a Golden Gloves boxer, rugby star and football player in college; received a master’s degree in English from the University of Oxford; and flew helicopters as a captain in the U.S. Army, but turned down a teaching position at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, to pursue songwriting in Nashville. Hoping to break into the industry, he worked as a part-time janitor at Columbia Records’ Music Row Studio in 1966 when Dylan recorded tracks for the groundbreaking double album Blonde on Blonde.

At times, the legend of Kristofferson was larger than real life. Cash liked to tell a mostly exaggerated story about how Kristofferson landed a helicopter on Cash’s lawn, beer in hand, to give him a cassette of “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down.” In interviews over the years, Kristofferson has said, with all due respect to Cash, that the Man in Black wasn’t even home at the time, that the demo tape was a song that no one had actually cut, and that he certainly couldn’t play with one Helicopter in hand flying beer.

He later said that without Cash he might not have had a career.

“He kind of took me under his wing before he cut one of my songs,” Kristofferson said in a 2006 interview with The Associated Press. “He recorded my first record, which was record of the year. He brought me on stage for the first time.”

One of his most recorded songs, “Me and Bobby McGee,” was written at the recommendation of Monument Records founder Fred Foster. Foster had a song title in mind called “Me and Bobby McKee,” named after a secretary in his building. Kristofferson said in an interview in Performing Songwriter magazine that after watching the Frederico Fellini film “La Strada,” he was inspired to write the lyrics about a man and a woman traveling together.

In 1973, he married fellow songwriter Rita Coolidge and together they had a successful duet career that earned them two Grammy awards. They divorced in 1980.

Forming the Highwaymen with Nelson, Cash and Jennings was another crucial point in his career as an artist. He told the AP in 2005 that it was “unreal” to be on equal terms with men who had been his heroes.

“It was like seeing his face on Mount Rushmore,” he said.

The group only released three albums between 1985 and 1995. Jennings died in 2002 and Cash died a year later. Of the four, only Nelson is still alive.

His first film role was in Dennis Hopper’s “The Last Movie” in 1971.

In addition to his leading roles, he had a penchant for westerns.

He was the young titular criminal in director Sam Peckinpah’s 1973 “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid,” a truck driver in the same director’s 1978 “Convoy” and a corrupt sheriff in director John Sayles’ “Lone Star.” Year 1996.

He told the AP in 2006 how he got his first acting gigs while performing in Los Angeles.

“Coincidentally, my first professional gig was at the Troubadour in LA, opening for Linda Rondstadt,” Kristofferson said. “A lot of people came from the film industry and I started getting film offers without having any experience. Of course, I had no performance experience either.”

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Hall reported from Nashville. AP National Writer Hillel Italie contributed to this report.