Kris Kristofferson, the country music legend and A Star Is Born actor, has died at the age of 88.
The singer-songwriter died peacefully at his home in Maui, Hawaii, on Saturday, family spokesperson Ebie McFarland said.
No cause of death was given but the musician had been suffering from memory loss since he was in his 70s.
Born in Brownsville, Texas, Kristofferson joined forces with Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings in the mid-1980s to create the country supergroup The Highwaymen.
Despite being a singer himself, many of his songs were best known as performed by others, including Ray Price’s US number one hit For the Good Times and Janis Joplin’s Me And Bobby McGee.
He won a Grammy Award for hit Help Me Make It Through The Night and was indicted into the county music hall of fame in 2004.
Former bandmate and fellow country music star Nelson said there was “no better songwriter alive” when talking about Kristofferson during a 2009 award ceremony.
“Everything he writes is a standard and we’re all just going to have to live with that,” Nelson said.
Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson at a preview of A Star is Born in 1976. Pic: AP
The pair together again at the Grammy Awards in 2011. Pic: AP
As an actor, he won the 1976 Golden Globe Award for Best Actor after his performance in romantic drama A Star Is Born opposite Barbra Streisand.
The film was a remake of the 1937 original with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March, and was later adapted into a musical starring Judy Garland and James Mason and subsequently again in 2018 starring Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper.
Members of The Highwaymen, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash in 1985. Pic: AP
Kristofferson also appeared opposite Ellen Burstyn in Martin Scorsese’s 1974 film Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and acted alongside Wesley Snipes in Marvel’s Blade in 1998.
Before the stage and screen, Kristofferson was a boxer with US organisation Golden Gloves, he also gained a master’s degree in English at the University of Oxford, turning down an opportunity to teach at a US military academy in New York to pursue songwriting in Nashville.
Hoping for a break into the industry, he worked as a part-time caretaker at Columbia Records’ Music Row studio.