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    • The country singer and “Blade” actor was 88 years old
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    The country singer and “Blade” actor was 88 years old

    Bronwen Cerys Posted on

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

    Kristofferson died Saturday at his home in Maui, California, 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 28th,” the Kristofferson family said in a statement. “We are all so blessed for our time with him. Thank you for loving him for all these many years, and when you see a rainbow, you know he’s smiling down on us all.”

    USA TODAY has reached out to the singer’s reps for further details.

    Despite a voice he likened to “a frog,” Kristofferson released more than 20 studio albums and played for a decade with the Mount Rushmore of country music – 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 number 1 Billboard country hit), “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, the first thing you say is his name,” Nelson said in 2020 about “one of my oldest best friends” Kristofferson, adding. “He probably wrote more great songs than anyone else.”

    A Rhodes Scholar who studied at Oxford University and a former Golden Globes boxer, Kristofferson made an unforgettable impression on 1970s screens as the scruffy, 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 opposite Barbra Streisand’s rising star in 1976’s “A Star Is Born.”

    The former college football star starred in the 1977 professional football comedy “Semi-Tough” with Burt Reynolds and as an anti-authority truck driver in the road action comedy “Convoy” from director Sam Peckinpah.

    The oldest of Maj. Gen. Henry Kristofferson’s three children, Kristoffer was born on June 22, 1936, in Brownsville, Texas. He loved listening to country star Hank Williams on the radio and began songwriting at the age of 11.

    Coming from a military family that moved frequently, the Kristoffersons eventually settled in San Mateo, California. 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 sports legend there, playing on the rugby and football teams and serving as sports editor of the college newspaper.

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

    In 1965, his unit was preparing for deployment to Vietnam, but Captain Kristofferson got a job teaching literature at West Point. Instead, he gave up his assignment to devote himself to songwriting in Nashville. The aspiring singer-songwriter started out as a bartender and janitor at Columbia Recording Studios.

    Director Peckinpah launched Kristofferson into film stardom in 1973 by casting him as William H. Bonney in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. The film career boomed until it found major success with Kristofferson’s starring role in one of the most infamous failures in Hollywood film history, the ill-fated 1980s epic Heaven’s Gate.

    “I’m sure it took me off course that I was on. “I think it made me unsellable 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 quietly retiring 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 were during Willie Nelson’s two-day 90th birthday party concert in April at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. During an emotional stage visit, a beaming Kristofferson sang his classic “Lovin’ Her Was Easier” with Roseanne Cash. Both artists cried as the song ended to thunderous applause from the audience.

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    Bronwen Cerys
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