Kris Kristofferson, the renowned award winning actor and country singer-songwriter, has died. He was 88. He was surrounded by family when he died “peacefully” at his home in Maui on Saturday, Sept. 28. Kristoffer Kristofferson was born in Brownsville, Texas, to Mary Ann (née Ashbrook) and Lars Henry Kristofferson, a U.S. Army Air Corps officer (later a U.S. Air Force major general). Although his father tried to push Kris into the military, Kristofferson attended Pomona College and experienced his first national exposure in 1958, appearing in the March 31 issue of Sports Illustrated for his achievements in collegiate rugby union, American football, and track and field. In 1960, Kristofferson graduated with a B.Phil. degree in English literature from Oxford.
Though he wanted to be a writer under pressure from his family, joined the U.S. Army and was commissioned as a second lieutenant, attaining the rank of captain. He became a helicopter pilot after receiving flight training. During the early 1960s, he was stationed in West Germany as a member of the 8th Infantry Division. During this time, he resumed his music career and formed a band. After leaving the army in 1965, Kristofferson moved to Nashville. Struggling for success in music, he worked at odd jobs in the meantime while burdened with medical expenses resulting from his son’s defective esophagus. He and his wife divorced in 1968.
Among his songwriting credits are “Me and Bobby McGee”, “For the Good Times”, “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down”, and “Help Me Make It Through the Night”, all of which were hits for other artists. He release 21 solo albums and won several Grammy’s. In 1985, Kristofferson joined fellow country artists Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash in the country music supergroup the Highwaymen, which was a key creative force in the outlaw country music movement that eschewed the traditional Nashville country music machine in favor of independent songwriting and producing.
As an actor, Kristofferson was known for his roles in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), Blume in Love (1973), Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974), A Star Is Born (1976) (which earned him a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor), Convoy (1978), Heaven’s Gate (1980), Stagecoach (1986), Millenium (1989), Lone Star (1996), and the Blade film trilogy (1998–2004). Kristofferson was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2004 and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014. Following the release of his final studio album, The Cedar Creek Sessions, in 2016, the country icon formally announced his retirement from music in 2021 and shared that Morris Higham Management was representing his estate.
Married 3 times, he also dated Janis Joplin for a while. His second marriage was to singer Rita Coolidge in 1973, ending in divorce by 1980. Kristofferson married Lisa Meyers in 1983. Kristofferson and Meyers owned a home in Las Flores Canyon in Malibu, California,[31] and maintained a residence in Hana, Hawaii, on the island of Maui. Kristofferson had eight children from his three marriages: two from his first marriage to Fran Beer; one from his second marriage to Rita Coolidge and five from his marriage to his third wife, Lisa (née Meyers) Kristofferson.