COUNTRY music superstar and Hollywood actor Kris Kristofferson has died aged 88 after an incredible six-decade career.
Kristofferson passed peacefully surrounded by his family at his home in Maui, Hawaii on Saturday, a family spokeswoman said.
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Kristofferson didn’t make a record until he was 33 but became one of country music’s most famous stars.
Starting in the late 1960s, the Brownsville, 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.
He was emboldened during his career by a fleeting backstage meeting with his other idol, country superstar Johnny Cash.
“I’m sure he didn’t remember it,” Kristofferson said, “but to me that moment was electric. He was everything I expected.”
“He was skinny, eating a soda cracker and looking like death. I just shook his hand.
“He was my hero and he became my champion. Once I got to know him, he always encouraged me.”
But he came to play with Cash, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings in the country supergroup the Highwaymen.
As an actor, he played the leading man opposite Barbara Streisand in A Star is Born, but also had a fondness for shoot-out Westerns and cowboy dramas.
Born into a military family in Brownsville, Texas, his dad ascended the ranks to become a major-general in the US Air Force.
Initially, the handsome, athletic Kristofferson was the apple of his parents’ eyes.
He excelled in sport, playing American football and rugby union at a high level.
He even earned a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, where he was awarded a blue for boxing.
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