Kris Kristofferson, the country music superstar and A-list Hollywood actor, has died at the age of 88. He died peacefully and surrounded by his family at his home in Maui, Hawaii, on Saturday, family spokeswoman Ebie McFarland said. No cause of death was given.
Starting in the late 1960s, the 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. 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, bell-bottomed trousers and counterculture songs influenced by Bob Dylan, he represented a new breed of country songwriters along with peers such 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 held by BMI. "Everything he writes is a standard and we're all just going to have to live with that.
" As an actor, Kristofferson played the leading man opposite Barbara Streisand and Ellen Burstyn, but also had a fondness for shoot-out westerns and cowboy dramas. He received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for 1976 romantic drama A Star Is Born. He was a Golden Gloves boxer and.
