Outlaw country legend and Hollywood actor Kris Kristofferson has died. According to a statement from his family, Kristofferson passed away peacefully at home in Maui, surrounded by family. No cause of death has been provided. Kristofferson was 88.
Krisofferson was born into a military family in Brownsville, Texas and moved a lot during his childhood due to his father’s service. His family eventually settled in San Mateo, California, and he attended Pomona College, where he studied creative writing and won first prize and three other placements in a collegiate short-story contest sponsored by The Atlantic. He continued his studies as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where he earned a master’s degree in English literature and began writing and performing his own songs. Kristofferson then joined the U.S. Army and served as a helicopter pilot in West Germany, where he organized a soldiers’ band to play at service clubs.
After leaving the Army in 1965, Kristofferson moved to Nashville to pursue a career in music. He took a job as a janitor at Columbia Records and worked as a commercial helicopter pilot before breaking through as a songwriter. Hits like ‘Me and Bobby McGee’ and ‘Sunday Morning Coming Down’ were famously recorded by Janis Joplin and Johnny Cash, while artists like Waylon Jennings, Ray Price, and Gladys Knight also performed his songs.
In 1970, he released his debut album, Kristofferson, which was followed by The Silver Tongued Devil and I in 1971. He made his acting debut in Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie that same year, and continued regularly releasing albums while appearing in films by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Sam Peckinpah, and John Sayles. He won a Golden Globe for his starring role alongside Barbra Streisand in 1976’s A Star Is Born.
In 1985, Kristofferson formed the outlaw country supergroup the Highwaymen with Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings. Together, they released three albums – 1985’s Highwayman, 1990’s Highwayman 2, and 1995’s The Road Goes on Forever – and starred Stagecoach. Kristofferson has been inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Country Music Hall of Fame. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys in 2014. His final album, The Cedar Creek Sessions, came out in 2016.
