Kris Kristofferson

But do not think that Kris Kristofferson corresponds to that type of person taken advantage of a time and a series of slogans, unable to earn a living on their own. It could have been many things in his life, but it was well past thirty when he decided that he was going to dedicate himself to singing. In 1970 he released his first record, “Me and Bobby McGee,” and it quickly became a hit. A short time later he began to combine music with film when Dennis Hopper offered him a small role in The Last Movie in 1971.

Kristoffer Kristian Kristofferson was born in Brownsville, Texas on June 22, 1936. His father was a general in the Air Force. Kris studied at Pomona College, in California, where he excelled in sports, and from there he went to no less than the University of Oxford, in England, where he studied literature. During that time he began writing his first songs, under the pseudonym Kris Carson. Upon his return, however, the strength of the blood called to him and he enlisted in the army, where he became a helicopter pilot and rose to the rank of captain. But his creative vocation was too intense, and his idyll with the army was shattered when, in 1965, he turned down an offer to teach at West Point Military Academy, no less. You can see that the guy was a good soldier and the truth is that he looks like one of those tough and unscrupulous sergeants from Vietnam movies. In short, the reality is that the future actor went to live in Nashville, then and now the mythical center of country music in the United States. There he got to know the environment and the people who would change his life from now on, people likeJohnny Cash or Janis Joplin . With Cash she recorded in 1970 the song “Sunday Morning Coming Down”, which was named best song of the year by the Country Music Association. In 1969 he divorced his first wife, whom he had married in 1961 and had had two children. He later married Rita Coolidge in 1973, but the riots of that time also caught up with him and Kris became an alcoholic, which ruined his marriage. At that time, he also had famous romances with women like Barbra Streisand , Janis Joplin or Joan Baez. He divorced Rita in 1980, with whom he had a child together. He would still marry once more in 1983, to Lisa Meyers, with whom he continues to live and with whom he has had five other children.

After his behind-the-scenes debut in 1971 thanks to his colleague Dennis Hopper, the budding actor began to participate as the main actor in notable films, where his imposing physique matched perfectly. The actor has a very authentic appearance, a rude but sensible man, and directors like Sam Peckinpah in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid or Martin Scorsese in the wonderful Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore were able to get a great deal out of that . In 1976 he would form a duo with Barbra Streisand in A Star Is Born (1976) , a remake of William A. Wellman ‘s story from the 1930s.I want the head of Alfredo García (1974) and Convoy (1978), a kind of action western with Ali MacGraw . In 1980, she starred in the very long Heaven’s Gate , an admirable film that failed at the box office and brought financial ruin to its director, Michael Cimino . Four years later, he starred with Willie Nelson in the musical drama Songwriter , for which Kristofferson earned an Oscar nomination for best song. Two years later, in 1986, he worked with his old friend Johnny Cash in the telefilm The Last Days of Frank and Jesse James .

In the following years, he combined music and film, publishing records and shooting rather normal films, although among which the two that he shot under the direction of John Sayles stand out : Lone Star (1996), Limbo (1999) and later Silver . City (2004), or James Ivory ‘s stupendous drama , A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries . He also did well as a veteran vampire slayer in the Blade trilogy , where he was the teacher of Wesley Snipes .