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Country singer and ‘Blade’ actor was 88

Vaseline September 29, 2024

(This story has been updated to correct a typographical error.)

Singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson, whose stirring lyrics made him a country legend and whose rugged good looks led to Hollywood movie stars in the 1970s, has died. He was 88.

Kristofferson died Saturday at his home in Maui, Hawaii, a representative for Kristofferson confirmed to People magazine and Variety. A cause of death was not given.

“It is with heavy hearts that we share the news that our husband/father/grandfather, Kris Kristofferson, passed away peacefully at home on Saturday, September 28,” the Kristofferson family said in a statement. “We are all so blessed for our time with him. Thank you for loving him all these years, and when you see a rainbow, know that he is smiling at us all.”

USA TODAY has reached out to the singer’s representatives for more details.

Even with a voice he likened to “a frog,” Kristofferson released more than two dozen studio albums and spent a decade playing with country music’s Mount Rushmore — Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson — in the outlaw country band The Highwaymen. from 1985 to 1995.

The prolific songwriter’s catalog includes immortal classics, many made famous by other singers. These include “Me and Bobby McGee” (Janis Joplin), “For the Good Times” (Ray Price), “Sunday Morning Comin’ Down” (Johnny Cash’s No. 1 country hit on Billboard), “Lovin’ Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again) (Roger Miller), “Help Me Make It Through the Night” (Sammi Smith) and “Once More with Feeling” (co-written with Shel Silverstein and sung by Jerry Lee Lewis).

“When you start talking about songwriters, you mention his name first,” Nelson said in 2020 about “one of my oldest best friends,” Kristofferson, adding. “He probably wrote more great songs than anyone else.”

Kristofferson, a Rhodes Scholar who attended Oxford University and was once a Golden Globes boxer, left a memorable mark on the movie screens of the 1970s as the perfectly unkempt, bearded leading man. His authentic performances included the romantic lead in Martin Scorsese’s 1974 drama ‘Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore’ and as an aging alcoholic rock singer alongside Barbra Streisand’s rising star in 1976’s ‘A Star Is Born’.

The one-time college football standout starred in the 1977 professional football comedy “Semi-Tough” with Burt Reynolds and as an authoritative truck driver in director Sam Peckinpah’s road-action comedy “Convoy.”

The eldest of three children of Major General Henry Kristofferson, Kristoffer was born on June 22, 1936 in Brownsville, Texas, and enjoyed listening to country star Hank Williams on the radio and began writing songs at age 11.

Born into a military family that moved frequently, the Kristoffersons eventually settled in San Mateo, California, and the singer graduated from San Mateo High School in 1954. After graduating, he enrolled at Pomona College in Claremont, California. The Golden Gloves boxer was a sporting legend there, starring on the rugby and football teams and as sports editor of the university newspaper.

The Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) graduate deferred his Army commitment to study British literature as a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford. Upon returning to the US, Kristofferson married his girlfriend Frances Beer (with whom he would have two children), graduated from Ranger School and became a helicopter pilot.

In 1965, his unit was preparing for a deployment to Vietnam, but Captain Kristofferson was assigned to teach literature at West Point. Instead, he quit his job to pursue songwriting in Nashville. The aspiring singer-songwriter started out as a bartender and janitor at Columbia Recording Studios.

Director Peckinpah launched Kristofferson to movie stardom in 1973, casting him as William H. Bonney in “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.” The movie career took off until he hit the big time with Kristofferson’s starring role in one of the most infamous flops in Hollywood film history, the ill-fated 1980s epic “Heaven’s Gate.”

‘I’m sure it took me off the course I was on at the time. I think it made me unmarketable for a while,” Kristofferson said in an interview for the documentary “Final Cut: The Making of ‘Heaven’s Gate’ and the Unmaking of a Studio.”

Kristofferson continued to perform music until he quietly retired in 2020, after being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2004 and the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2015.

In recent years, Kristofferson has struggled with memory loss, telling Rolling Stone in 2016 that he believed it was due to Lyme disease, which he was diagnosed with earlier that year.

Kristofferson’s final performances took place during Willie Nelson’s two-night 90th birthday party concert in April at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. During an emotional stage visit, a radiant Kristofferson sang his classic ‘Lovin’ Her Was Easier’ with Roseanne Cash. Both artists were in tears as the song ended to wild applause from the audience.