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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kris Kristofferson, a Rhodes scholar with a deft writing style and rough charisma who became a country music superstar and an A-list Hollywood actor, has died.

Kristofferson died at his home on Maui, Hawaii, on Saturday, family spokeswoman Ebie McFarland said in an email. He was 88.

McFarland said Kristofferson died peacefully, surrounded by his family. No cause was given.

Starting in the late 1960s, the Brownsville, Texas native wrote such country and rock ‘n’ roll standards as “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down,” “Help Me Make it Through the Night,” “For the Good Times” and “Me and Bobby McGee.” Kristofferson was a singer himself, but many of his songs were best known as performed by others, whether Ray Price crooning “For the Good Times” or Janis Joplin belting out “Me and Bobby McGee.”

He starred opposite Ellen Burstyn in director Martin Scorsese’s 1974 film “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” starred opposite Barbra Streisand in the 1976 “A Star Is Born,” and acted alongside Wesley Snipes in Marvel’s “Blade” in 1998.

Kristofferson, who could recite William Blake from memory, wove intricate folk music lyrics about loneliness and tender romance into popular country music. With his long hair and bell-bottomed slacks and counterculture songs influenced by Bob Dylan, he represented a new breed of country songwriters along with such peers as Willie Nelson, John Prine and Tom T. Hall.

“There’s no better songwriter alive than Kris Kristofferson,” Nelson said at a 2009 BMI award ceremony for Kristofferson. “Everything he writes is a standard and we’re all just going to have to live with that.”

Kristofferson retired from performing and recording in 2021, making only occasional guest appearances on stage, including a performance with Cash’s daughter Rosanne at Nelson’s 90th birthday celebration at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles in 2023. The two sang “Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again),” a song that was a hit for Kristofferson and a longtime live staple for Nelson, another great interpreter of his work.

Nelson and Kristofferson would join forces with Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings to create the country supergroup “The Highwaymen” starting in the mid-1980s.

Kristofferson was a Golden Gloves boxer, rugby star and football player in college; received a master’s degree in English from Merton College at the University of Oxford in England; and flew helicopters as a captain in the U.S. Army but turned down an appointment to teach at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, to pursue songwriting in Nashville. Hoping to break into the industry, he worked as a part-time janitor at Columbia Records’ Music Row studio in 1966 when Dylan recorded tracks for the seminal “Blonde on Blonde” double album.

At times, the legend of Kristofferson was larger than real life. Cash liked to tell a mostly exaggerated story of how Kristofferson landed a helicopter on Cash’s lawn to give him a tape of “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” with a beer in one hand. Over the years in interviews, Kristofferson said with all respect to Cash, while he did land a helicopter at Cash’s house, the Man in Black wasn’t even home at the time, the demo tape was a song that no one ever actually cut and he certainly couldn’t fly a helicopter holding a beer.

In a 2006 interview with The Associated Press, he said he might not have had a career without Cash.

“Shaking his hand when I was still in the Army backstage at the Grand Ole Opry was the moment I’d decided I’d come back,” Kristofferson said. “It was electric. He kind of took me under his wing before he cut any of my songs. He cut my first record that was record of the year. He put me on stage the first time.”

One of his most recorded songs, “Me and Bobby McGee,” was written based on a recommendation from Monument Records founder Fred Foster. Foster had a song title in his head called “Me and Bobby McKee,” named after a female secretary in his building. Kristofferson said in an interview in the magazine, “Performing Songwriter,” that he was inspired to write the lyrics about a man and woman on the road together after watching the Frederico Fellini film, “La Strada.”

Joplin, who had a close relationship with Kristofferson, changed the lyrics to make Bobby McGee a man and cut her version just days before she died in 1970 from a drug overdose. The recording became a posthumous No. 1 hit for Joplin.

Hits that Kristofferson recorded include “Watch Closely Now,” “Desperados Waiting for a Train,” “A Song I’d Like to Sing” and “Jesus Was a Capricorn.”

In 1973, he married fellow songwriter Rita Coolidge and together they had a successful duet career that earned them two Grammy awards. They divorced in 1980.

The formation of the Highwaymen, with Nelson, Cash and Jennings, was another pivotal point in his career as a performer.

“I think I was different from the other guys in that I came in it as a fan of all of them,” Kristofferson told the AP in 2005. “I had a respect for them when I was still in the Army. When I went to Nashville they were like major heroes of mine because they were people who took the music seriously. To be not only recorded by them but to be friends with them and to work side by side was just a little unreal. It was like seeing your face on Mount Rushmore.”

The group put out just three albums between 1985 and 1995. Jennings died in 2002 and Cash died a year later. Kristofferson said in 2005 that there was some talk about reforming the group with other artists, such as George Jones or Hank Williams Jr., but Kristofferson said it wouldn’t have been the same.

“When I look back now — I know I hear Willie say it was the best time of his life,” Kristofferson said in 2005. “For me, I wish I was more aware how short of a time it would be. It was several years, but it was still like the blink of an eye. I wish I would have cherished each moment.”

Among the four, only Nelson is now alive.

Kristofferson’s sharp-tongued political lyrics sometimes hurt his popularity, especially in the late 1980s. His 1989 album, “Third World Warrior” was focused on Central America and what United States policy had wrought there, but critics and fans weren’t excited about the overtly political songs.

He said during a 1995 interview with the AP he remembered a woman complaining about one of the songs that began with killing babies in the name of freedom.

“And I said, ‘Well, what made you mad — the fact that I was saying it or the fact that we’re doing it? To me, they were getting mad at me ’cause I was telling them what was going on.”

As the son of an Air Force General, he enlisted in the Army in the 1960s because it was expected of him.

“I was in ROTC in college, and it was just taken for granted in my family that I’d do my service,” he said in a 2006 AP interview. “From my background and the generation I came up in, honor and serving your country were just taken for granted. So, later, when you come to question some of the things being done in your name, it was particularly painful.”

Hollywood may have saved his music career. He still got exposure through his film and television appearances even when he couldn’t afford to tour with a full band.

Kristofferson’s first role was in Dennis Hopper’s “The Last Movie,” in 1971.

He had a fondness for Westerns, and would use his gravelly voice to play attractive, stoic leading men. He was Burstyn’s ruggedly handsome love interest in “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” and a tragic rock star in a rocky relationship with Streisand in “A Star Is Born,” a role echoed by Bradley Cooper in the 2018 remake.

He was the young title outlaw in director Sam Peckinpah’s 1973 “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid,” a truck driver for the same director in 1978’s “Convoy,” and a corrupt sheriff in director John Sayles’ 1996, “Lone Star.” He also starred in one of Hollywood biggest financial flops, “Heaven’s Gate,” a 1980 Western that ran tens of millions of dollars over budget.

And in a rare appearance in a superhero movie, he played the mentor of Snipes’ vampire hunter in “Blade.”

He described in a 2006 AP interview how he got his first acting gigs when he performed in Los Angeles.

“It just happened that my first professional gig was at the Troubadour in L.A. opening for Linda Rondstadt,” Kristofferson said. “Robert Hilburn (Los Angeles Times music critic) wrote a fantastic review and the concert was held over for a week,” Kristofferson said. “There were a bunch of movie people coming in there, and I started getting film offers with no experience. Of course, I had no experience performing either.”

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Hall reported from Nashville. AP National Writer Hillel Italie contributed to this report.

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This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Rosanne Cash.

Here is a roundup of stories from The Canadian Press designed to bring you up to speed…

Ontario MPP wants paid holiday for TRC day

Ontario’s only First Nation representative at Queen’s Park plans to soon table proposed legislation, in his own Indigenous language, to have the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation declared a paid provincial holiday.

The day is a federal statutory holiday, but not a provincial one in Ontario.

New Democrat deputy leader Sol Mamakwa, who represents the northwestern riding of Kiiwetinoong, wants Ontario to follow the federal government’s lead and said he hopes Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives will support the idea.

The day recognizes the abuse suffered by Inuit, First Nations and Metis people at hundreds of state- and church-run residential schools across the country.

It is a statutory holiday for federally regulated workers and employees in some other provinces such as British Columbia.

The day is an evolution of Orange Shirt Day, an initiative started in 2013 and inspired by Phyllis Webstad’s story of having the orange shirt her grandmother gave her taken away when she arrived at a residential school in 1973 at the age of six.

Here’s what else we’re watching…

Ceremony to mark Truth and Reconciliation Day

A National Day for Truth and Reconciliation ceremony is planned in Ottawa this afternoon to honour the survivors of Canada’s residential school system and the children who never returned home.

The event on Parliament Hill is set to begin at 3 p.m. ET and includes survivors and Indigenous leaders, while other events are planned in locations across Canada throughout the day.

Gov. Gen. Mary Simon will host a sacred fire ceremony in the morning at Rideau Hall before joining the event on Parliament Hill alongside survivors and Indigenous leaders in the afternoon.

More than 150,000 children were forced to attend residential schools, and many survivors detailed the horrific abuse they suffered to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

An estimated 6,000 children died while attending the schools, although experts say the actual number could be much higher.

Montreal dockworkers set to strike Monday

The union representing longshore workers at the Port of Montreal is set to go on strike at two terminals today if a last-minute deal isn’t reached by 7 a.m.

The union served a 72-hour strike notice on Friday, warning of a potential work stoppage that could last until Thursday at two terminals owned by Termont Montreal.

The union local, which is affiliated with the Canadian Union of Public Employees, says about 350 members would be part of the labour action, affecting roughly 35 per cent of container shipments.

The longshore workers’ collective agreement with the Maritime Employers Association expired on Dec. 31.

The association issued a statement on Sunday evening saying it has tried “all possible means” of avoiding the strike, adding neither mediation nor a Sunday afternoon emergency meeting with the Canada Industrial Relations Board were fruitful.

Fire destroys church in northwestern Saskatchewan

An early morning fire has destroyed an Anglican church in northwestern Saskatchewan.

Loon Lake Mayor Brian Hirschfeld says the blaze levelled St. George’s Church in the village on Saturday morning.

RCMP say no one was in the church at the time and no injuries have been reported to police.

Police say the investigation is in its preliminary stages, and they’re asking anyone who saw anything suspicious in the area of the church on Saturday morning, or who has information about the fire, to contact them.

George Rothenburger, who was the secretary at St. George’s and was also a lay reader, says the building was constructed in 1938 and still held a community service once per month.

Rothenburger says he learned of the fire when he got a phone call shortly after 5 a.m. on Saturday, and when he got dressed and stepped outside his home, he could see the flames towering into the air.

AI companies could be more transparent: Meta VP

Meta Platforms’ head of artificial intelligence research says many companies are doing plenty of work to keep platforms safe but they’re not being as open about it as they should be.

As A-I evolves, Joelle Pineau (JOH’-el PIN’-oh) says she hopes companies involved in its development and use tackle transparency.

She envisions this can be done by asking them to document information like what data was used to create their A-I models, their capabilities and some of the results from risk assessments.

While Pineau doesn’t have a prescriptive list of everything she wants companies to reveal, she sees it as a first step that would give the public the same kind of transparency they get from reviewing ingredient and nutritional information on grocery store products.

Pineau feels compiling the information would also build trust and force companies to behave and be even safer because they know their work could be scrutinized.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 30, 2024.

VICTORIA – British Columbia’s election campaign is entering its second week with each party’s team of candidates in place and the leaders looking ahead to the upcoming televised debate.

The Oct. 9 debate will be one of the few occasions B.C. voters will see the leaders of the New Democrats, B.C. Conservatives and the Greens face each other during the campaign.

NDP Leader David Eby and B.C. Conservatives Leader John Rustad spent the first week of the campaign taking verbal personal swings at each other and criticizing their policies.

Eby says Rustad’s conspiracy-supporting anti-vaccine position could end up hurting people and the health care system, while Rustad says the NDP leader’s weak leadership and left wing viewpoints are damaging the province.

Elections BC says its final list of nominated candidates for the Oct. 19 vote includes 93 from the NDP, 93 from the B.C. Conservatives, 69 from the Greens and 40 Independents.

The list from Elections BC does not contain any official Opposition BC United candidates but does include five Freedom Party of B.C. hopefuls, four Libertarians, three representing the Communist Party of B.C. and two candidates from the Christian Heritage Party of B.C.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 30, 2024.

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