Kris Kristofferson, US country singer and actor, dies at the age of 88 | Kris Kristofferson

Kris Kristofferson, the country singer who juggled a prolific acting career alongside his music, has died at the age of 88.

Kristofferson's family confirmed his death Sunday evening and said he “passed away peacefully” at home Saturday. “We are all so blessed for our time with him,” said the statement, signed by his wife Lisa, his eight children and seven grandchildren. “Thank you for loving him all these many years, and when you see a rainbow, you know he’s smiling down on us all.”

Kristofferson was admired for the courage, emotional vulnerability and literary prowess of his country songwriting, frequently topping the US country charts. Cover versions of his songs have been hits for artists such as Janis Joplin, Gladys Knight and Johnny Cash. In the mid-70s he worked with film directors such as Martin Scorsese and Sam Peckinpah and won a Golden Globe in 1976 for his work opposite Barbra Streisand in the remake of A Star is Born.

Kristofferson was born in Texas in 1936, attended high school in California and initially wanted to become a novelist. He later studied literature at Pomona College in Southern California and at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Inspired by the emerging rock and roll scene, he made his first foray into music in the UK as Kris Carson, although the songs he recorded were never released.

He continued to play music during his time in the U.S. Army, where he became a helicopter pilot, a skill he continued (in the oil industry and with the National Guard) after leaving the armed forces in 1965 – angering his military family. “I prided myself on being the best worker or the man who could dig the trenches the fastest,” he later said. “Something inside me made me want to do the hard things… Part of it was that I wanted to be a writer and I realized I had to get out and live.”

He moved to the country music hub of Nashville, where he worked as a bartender and janitor for Columbia Recording Studios. In the late '60s he wrote songs for Jerry Lee Lewis and country singers such as Ray Stevens, Faron Young and Billy Walker, but his solo career stalled.

His breakthrough came when he landed a National Guard helicopter at Johnny Cash's home and gave him a cassette of his songs. He later described the incident as “a kind of invasion of privacy that I wouldn't recommend.” Cash admired Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down and his recording of Kristofferson's song reached the top of the country charts in 1970 and was named Song of the Year at the Country Music Association Awards.

That year, Kristofferson recorded the first of 18 studio albums he released throughout his career. He briefly dated Janis Joplin, who recorded his song “Me and Bobby McGee,” and it became a No. 1 hit after her death in 1970. Another Kristofferson song from that year, “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” became a hit single for Sammi Smith and was later covered by Elvis Presley, Gladys Knight, Mariah Carey and others.

By the time his fourth album, Jesus Was a Capricorn, topped the country charts in 1972, the strikingly handsome Kristofferson had begun an acting career and first appeared in Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie. Other notable films include the role of the outlaw Billy the Kid in Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), alongside Ellen Burstyn in Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974) and with Burt Reynolds in the sports comedy Semi- Hard (1977). A Star Is Born cemented his Hollywood success, which was later undermined by Heaven's Gate (1980), which was notoriously a box office flop.

In 1979, Willie Nelson made a hit album of Kristofferson covers, and in 1982 the pair collaborated with Dolly Parton and Brenda Lee on a compilation of their mid-'60s songs. In 1985, Kristofferson and Nelson formed another supergroup, the Highwaymen, with Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings. Her debut album Highwayman, with the title song written by Jimmy Webb, brought Kristofferson back to the top of the country charts.

In the 1980s, he was a vocal critic of US President Ronald Reagan and foreign policy in Central America, as the US financed the fight against leftist forces in El Salvador and Nicaragua. Kristofferson's 1986 album Repossessed referenced the conflicts.

His acting career, while steady, received a boost in 1996 with the role of villainous Sheriff Charlie Wade in John Sayles' acclaimed neo-Western Lone Star alongside Chris Cooper and Matthew McConaughey. This led to prominent roles, including that of vampire hunter Abraham Whistler in three Blade films starring Wesley Snipes.

Kristofferson retired in 2021. His most recent film role was in the Ethan Hawke-directed drama Blaze (2018) and his most recent album was 2016's The Cedar Creek Sessions.

He was married three times, first to Fran Beer in 1960. In 1973, he married singer Rita Coolidge, and their duet album “Full Moon” that year became one of Kristofferson's biggest hits, reaching the top 30 on the pop charts. They divorced in 1980. He is survived by his third wife, Lisa Meyers, whom he married in 1983 and with whom he had five children, in addition to three other children from his first two marriages.