THE trappings of fame never sat comfortably with Kris Kristofferson. The country singer and Hollywood actor, who died at the weekend aged 88 , preferred a simple, free-spirited existence. Despite coming from a military family and once flying helicopters for the US Army , he was a natural-born outsider.
This perhaps explained my encounter with him one wintery early evening some years ago in a dimly-lit underground coach park on London’s Cromwell Road. Having taken the lift at a big Tesco superstore, I descended several levels down to where Kristofferson’s tour bus was stationed. I was greeted by the man himself — tall, barefooted and dressed down in jeans and a black T-shirt.
READ MORE ON KRIS Not for him the cut-crystal chandeliers of a five star Park Lane hotel, this was where he chose to stay the night before his show at the Royal Albert Hall. As we sat at a tiny table bearing a half-filled bottle of Jack Daniel’s — and a pile of crumpled clothes on the floor beside us — the dad of eight spent the next couple of hours regaling me with anecdotes from his life less ordinary. To many, Kristofferson is best known as the chiselled, bearded hunk with piercing, deep-set blue eyes who appeared opposite Barbra Streisand in A Star Is Born.
Or maybe you remember him as trucker “Rubber Duck” in Convoy, hurtling across Arizona being chased by cops with girlfriend Melissa (Ali MacGraw) in tow. Most read in Showbiz But to me, his death at home in Hawaii marks the passing o.