Kris Kristofferson Dies: Legendary Country Singer-Songwriter And ‘A Star Is Born’ Golden Globe Winner Was 88
Kris Kristofferson, a country singer-songwriter who revolutionized the genre and Golden Globe-winning actor who starred opposite Barbra Streisand in the 1976 A Star Is Born, has died at 88, surrounded by family in his home in Maui, Hawaii.
No cause of death was given.
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“It is with a heavy heart that we share the news our husband/father/grandfather, Kris Kristofferson, passed away peacefully on Saturday, September 28 at home. We’re all so blessed for our time with him. Thank you for loving him all these many years, and when you see a rainbow, know he’s smiling down at us all,” wrote Kristofferson’s family on Instagram, asking for privacy.
As a prolific country music artist, Kristofferson racked up 13 Grammy nominations throughout his career, with three wins including for Best Country Song for the ballad “Help Me Make It Through The Night” off of his 1970 album Kristofferson. In 1984, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score for Songwriter alongside Willie Nelson, with whom he also co-starred in the music drama. “Me and Bobby McGee,” which he penned in 1969 and which Roger Miller first recorded, was eventually performed as a cover by Janis Joplin, and its posthumous release in 1971 landed it atop the Billboard 100 chart.
Portraying John Norman Howard in the heart-wrenching 1976 romantic drama opposite Streisand’s Esther Hoffman led him to a Golden Globe win for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy the following year.
In commemorating her co-star, Streisand wrote in a tribute shared online: “The first time I saw Kris performing at the Troubadour club in L.A. I knew he was something special. Barefoot and strumming his guitar, he seemed like the perfect choice for a script I was developing, which eventually became A Star Is Born.”
Other film credits included Payback (1999), which also starred Mel Gibson, Maria Bello and Lucy Liu, as well as the original Blade trilogy with Wesley Snipes, in which he portrayed his character’s mentor, the vampire hunter Abraham Whistler.
He played the romantic lead opposite Oscar winner Ellen Burstyn in Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974). He was three of Sam Peckinpah’s films: Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and Convoy. His long career also included Semi-Tough with Burt Reynolds, the two-part TV movie Freedom Road with Muhammad Ali, and Lone Star with Matthew McConaughey.
Kristofferson was a part of two legendary, troubled films. The first was Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie, the actor/director’s disastrous follow-up to Easy Rider. The second was Heaven’s Gate, Michael Cimino’s follow-up to The Deer Hunter.
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Born in Brownsville, Texas on June 22, 1936, Kristofferson graduated from Pomona College to Oxford University, where he received a Rhodes Scholarship to study literature. At Oxford, he was awarded the Blue for boxing, which honors athletes who are at the top of their game. He was also on the university’s rugby team.
Pushed by his Air Force major general father to join the military, he served in the U.S. Army, completed Ranger School, achieved the rank of captain and became a helicopter pilot. In the mid-60s, he decided to pursue songwriting, resigning his commission to teach literature at the prestigious West Point academy. (“It sounded like hell to me,” he said of the notion of explaining to his superiors what his curriculum would look like.)
While sweeping floors in Nashville’s studios frequented by the likes of Bob Dylan, he met Johnny Cash, who initially did not pay much attention to him. Working as a commercial helicopter pilot at the time helped him in his aim to garner Cash’s collaboration. The Man in Black eventually recorded Kristofferson’s classic “Sunday Morning Coming Down” (voted Song of the Year in 1970 by the Country Music Association) after the latter landed Cash’s helicopter in his yard.
“I took pride in being the best laborer, the guy that could dig the ditches the fastest,” he once said about his work ethic. “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. I know that’s why I ran in front of the bulls in Pamplona.”
In 1985, Kristofferson joined Cash, Nelson and Waylon Jennings to form the country supergroup The Highwaymen. Between 1985 and 1995, the group recorded three albums and toured together. Jennings died in 2002, and Cash in 2003. Kristofferson and Nelson continued collaborating in the years thereafter.
“Those tours and the records we made were a great time,” Kristofferson told Classic Rock magazine in 2010. “I just wish I was more aware of how lucky I was to share a stage with those people. I had no idea that two of them would be done so soon. Hell, I was up there and I had all my heroes with me. These are guys whose ashtrays I used to clean. I’m kinda amazed I wasn’t more amazed.”
Throughout his career, Kristofferson dealt with alcoholism and substance abuse, which he stated dissolved his marriage to fellow artist Rita Coolidge, with whom he shared two Grammy wins for Best Country Vocal Performance By A Duo Or Group.
Also a known activist, Kristofferson advocated for workers’, immigrants’ and farmers’ rights, becoming an emblem for counterculture artists. In 1992, he supported Sinéad O’Connor, who was booed at a Bob Dylan tribute concert following her television protest of child abuse by the Catholic Church on Saturday Night Live, saying that he refused to get her off the stage. “I went out and I said, ‘Don’t let the bastards get you down,” he said, calling her “courageous” as he embraced her prior to her performance.
Kristofferson was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2004, garnering a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Recording Academy in 2014. He achieved more lifetime honors from such organizations as the Country Music Association and the Academy of Country Music. “You can look at Nashville pre-Kris and post-Kris, because he changed everything,” Bob Dylan said of the artist.
CEO of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum Kyle Young shared in a statement online: “Kris Kristofferson believed to his core that creativity is God-given, and that those who ignore or deflect such a holy gift are doomed to failure and unhappiness. He preached that a life of the mind gives voice to the soul, and then he created a body of work that gave voice not only to his soul but to ours. Kris’s heroes included the prize fighter Muhammad Ali, the great poet William Blake, and the ‘Hillbilly Shakespeare,’ Hank Williams. He lived his life in a way that honored and exemplified the values of each of those men, and he leaves a righteous, courageous, and resounding legacy that rings with theirs.”
In a tribute to his friend, fellow multi-Grammy-winning musician Rodney Crowell said on the eve of his Lifetime Achievement Award unveiling: “Forty-three years later, having gotten to know the man and his wife, Lisa, I feel modestly qualified to scribble down these few words framing his extraordinary musical legacy: By creating a narrative style that introduced intelligence, humor, emotional eloquence, spiritual longing, male vulnerability, and a devilish sensuality — indeed, a form of eroticism — to country music, Kris Kristofferson, without compromising the content and quality of his work, did as much to expand the mainstream accessibility of an all-too-often misunderstood art form as Roy Acuff, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Roger Miller, Willie Nelson, Ray Charles (I’m thinking of Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music) and, more recently, Garth Brooks. And, lest we forget, the man is one hell of an accomplished actor.”
Kristofferson is survived by his wife, Lisa; eight children, Tracy, Kris Jr., Casey, Jesse, Jody, John, Kelly, and Blake; and seven grandchildren.
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