LOS ANGELES -- Kris Kristofferson, a Rhodes scholar with a deft writing style and rough charisma who became a country music superstar and A-list Hollywood actor, has died.Kristofferson died at his home on Maui, Hawaii on Saturday, family spokeswoman Ebie McFarland said in an email.He was 88.McFarland said Kristofferson died peacefully, surrounded by his family.
No cause was given.He was 88.
Starting in the late 1960s, the Brownsville, Texas native wrote such classics standards as “Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down,” “Help Me Make it Through the Night,” "For the Good Times" and "Me and Bobby McGee." Kristofferson was a singer himself, but many of his songs were best known as performed by others, whether Ray Price crooning “For the Good Times” or Janis Joplin belting out “Me and Bobby McGee.”He also starred opposite Ellen Burstyn in director Martin Scorsese's 1974 film “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” starred opposite Barbra Streisand in the 1976 “A Star Is Born,” and acted alongside Wesley Snipes in Marvel’s “Blade” in 1998.Kristofferson, who could recite William Blake from memory, wove intricate folk music lyrics about loneliness and tender romance into popular country music.With his long hair and bell-bottomed slacks and counterculture songs influenced by Bob Dylan, he represented a new breed of country songwriters along with such peers as Willie Nelson, John Prine and Tom T.
Hall."There's no better songwriter alive than Kris Kristofferson," Nelson said during a November 2009 award ceremony for Kristofferson held by BMI."Everything he writes is a standard and we're all just going to have to live with that."He was a Golden Gloves boxer and football player in college, received a master’s degree in English from Merton College at the University of Oxford in England and turned down an appointment to teach at the U.S.
Military Academy at West Point, New York, to pursue songwriting in Nashville.Hoping to break into the industry, he worked...