American singer and actor Kris Kristofferson has died at the age of 88

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

Kristofferson's family confirmed his death on Sunday night, saying he “passed away peacefully” at home on Saturday. “We are all so blessed for our time with him,” read the statement signed by his wife Lisa, his eight children and seven grandchildren. Looking at and smiling.”

Admired for the tenacity, emotional vulnerability and literary craft of her country songwriting, Kristofferson frequently topped the US country charts and her cover versions of her songs were hits for artists including Janis Joplin, Gladys Knight and Johnny Cash. In the mid-'70s, she worked with film directors including Martin Scorsese and Sam Peckinpah, and won a Golden Globe for her work opposite Barbra Streisand in the 1976 remake of A Star Is Born.

Born in Texas in 1936, Kristofferson attended high school in California and first wanted to be a novelist, later studying literature at Pomona College in Southern California and as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. Inspired by the nascent rock'n'roll scene, his first foray into music was in the UK as Chris Carson, although his recorded songs were never released.

He continued performing music during a spell in the US Army, where he became a helicopter pilot, a career he continued to pursue (in the oil industry and the National Guard) after leaving the force in 1965 – angering his military family. “I am proud of the best labor or the man who can dig the ditch the fastest,” he later said. “Something inside me was making me want to do hard things … part of it was that I wanted to be a writer, and I thought I had to get out and live.”

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

A breakthrough came after she landed a National Guard helicopter at Johnny Cash's home and gave him a tape of her singing, later describing the incident as “a kind of invasion of privacy that I wouldn't recommend.” Cash praised 'Comin' Down' on Sunday Morning, and in 1970 Kristofferson's recording of the song topped the country charts and won Song of the Year at the Country Music Association Awards.

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

While her fourth album Jesus Was a Capricorn topped the country charts in 1972, the strikingly beautiful Kristofferson began an acting career, first appearing in Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie. More notable films include playing Billy the Kid in Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), opposite Ellen Burstyn in Martin Scorsese's Alice Don't Live Here Anymore (1974), and with Burt Reynolds in the sports comedy-drama Semi . Hard (1977). A Star Is Born cemented his Hollywood success, but was later undermined by Heaven's Gate (1980), famously a box-office flop.

In 1979, Willie Nelson produced 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 called the Highwaymen with Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings. Their debut album, Highwayman, with the Jimmy Webb-penned title track, returned Kristofferson to the top of the country charts.

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

His acting career culminated in 1996 when he played villainous Sheriff Charlie Wade in John Seles' acclaimed neo-western Lone Star alongside Chris Cooper and Matthew McConaughey. This led to prominent roles in three Blade movies starring Wesley Snipes as vampire hunter Abraham Whistler.

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

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