KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, Hall of Fame singer-songwriter, was born in Brownsville, Texas just over the border from Matamoris, Mexico. The son of an Air Force Major-General, Kristofferson spent his youth moving around the country, finally finishing High School in San Mateo, CA. This life in motion style has never left him, clocking well over a million miles in his tour bus alone since 1970 when his songs, "Me and Bobby McGee," "Help Me Make it Through the Night," "For the Good Times," "Loving Her Was Easy" and "Why Not," to name a few, made him a much sought-after concert performer. Kristofferson has toured several months of the year for the last twenty years with his band and most recently, as a part of the Highwaymen with his longtime friends, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and the late Waylon Jennings.
Kristofferson is a graduate of the Pomona College in California where he majored in Creative Literature and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, where he studied William Blake while never abandoning his lifelong admiration for the down- home poet of country music, Hank Williams.
After a stint as an Army pilot, he declined a teaching position at West Point and moved to Nashville to pursue a writing career and a foothold in the country music scene. He took up various jobs including janitor at Columbia Studios, a bartender and a helicopter pilot ferrying workers and execs back and forth to the Gulf oilrigs. Within a few years, success arrived when his now classic song, "Sunday Morning Coming Down," won 1970's country music Song of the Year and Kris received the Songwriter of the Year award. He has since been named to the Songwriter's Hall of Fame and has had his songs recorded by hundreds of major artists.
Kristofferson's acting career lifted off in tandem with his musical success. He starred in his first film in 1971, and followed this success with several hits. Certainly a landmark in his film career was his role in A Star is Born with Barbara Streisand, for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actor. He has acted in an array of films over the last 30 years: Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, John Sayles' Limbo and Lone Star, Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Heaven's Gate, Payback and Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes.
A man of many accomplishments, Kristofferson lists "writer" under occupation in his passport. "It's where the stuff you feel in your heart is expressed, it's the closest thing to your soul," he says of his music. "To me it's satisfying to express things that you feel and have other people say' Right, that's exactly how I feel too."'
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