The late singer-songwriter proved himself as a credible and creditable actor for a variety of filmmakers.
Kris Kristofferson, who passed away Saturday at age 88, began acting in films during the early 1970s, around the same time he started performing his own songs in concert. And in both areas, he recalled when I interviewed him back in 2011 at the Nashville Film Festival, “It was kind of like learning on the job, finding out what works. And I found that what worked on stage was sort of like what was working in the films: Make people believe that you’re telling the truth.”
That insight served him well when he made his movie debut in Bill L. Norton’s Cisco Pike (1972), a vividly evocative slice of L.A. zeitgeist. Kristofferson claims he lucked into the gig only because another, more experienced actor had demanded more money to play the title role. But he brought such unaffected conviction to his performance as the antiheroic character, a prematurely fading musician who’s blackmailed by a crooked cop (Gene Hackman) into drug-dealing, that he attracted interest from other risk-taking filmmakers.
The secret of his success? Kristofferson credits actor Anthony Zerbe, a college buddy, with advising him early on to simply “ignore the camera” and keep it real – as real as the singer-songwriter came across in concert. “That was the best piece of direction I got for quite a while,” he says. “Hell, it was the only one. But it worked.”
During the first five years of his acting career, Kristofferson was cast by such notable filmmakers as Sam Peckinpah (Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid), Paul Mazursky (Blume in Love), Martin Scorsese (Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore), Michael Ritchie (Semi-Tough) — and Frank Pierson, who directed A Star is Born. In the latter film, Kristofferson starred (opposite Barbara Streisand) as self-destructive rock star John Norman Howard, arguably his most famous movie role, and earned a Golden Globe for his powerful performance.
“Looking back,” he said, “I’m kind of amazed that I wasn’t more amazed by the company I was keeping. Because I was lucky: I got to work with a lot of people that I had a lot of respect for. And, as I say, I was learning on the job.”
More important, he learned his lessons well. Kristofferson continued to thrive as a well-respected, much-in-demand character actor long into his showbiz career, being a chameleon who could convincingly and compellingly play everything from savage villainy (Lone Star) to grizzled sagacity (Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story), comic-book heroism (the Blade trilogy) to melancholy eccentricity (The Wendell Baker Story).
His other film credits included Michael Cimino’s controversial Heaven’s Gate (1980), Franklin Schaffner’s Coming Home (1989), James Ivory’s A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries (1998), and Ethan Hawke’s Blaze (2018). He played The Ringo Kid, the role that made John Wayne a star in John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939), when he co-starred in Ted Post’s 1986 TV-movie remake with fellow Highwaymen Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings. More recently, Kristofferson appeared in the independently produced Westerns Traded (with Trace Adkins and Michael Paré) and Hickok (with Luke Hemsworth, Trace Adkins and Bruce Dern).
His early Hollywood success enabled him to build and sustain a decades-long acting career that continued to parallel — and, from time to time, overshadow — his music career. Indeed, during an earlier C&I interview, Kristofferson admitted that shortly before a concert in Sweden, “This guy backstage was telling me, ‘You know, there are a lot of young people out in the audience who are saying, “What’s this? Whistler sings?” ’ Because they only knew me as that character from the Blade movies.”
The real turning point, Kristofferson said, came when he learned invaluable lessons about screen acting from no less a mentor than Martin Scorsese during the making of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. “When I read the script for Alice,” he said, “I really didn’t know if I was up to the guy. I felt I didn’t have the acting experience — just the mechanics of it — that probably was necessary.”
But when Kristofferson got the job, Scorsese gave him some key advice he never forgot. “Marty said something to me that was one of the most helpful things that a director ever told me. He said, ‘Don’t worry about what it says in the script when it says, “He says sternly,” or something like that. Just go through and cross out all of the directorial comments and just leave the dialogue. And figure how you would say that, how you would react to that.’ And that changed everything for me.”
“I figured Marty Scorsese must be pretty good with actors. And he was.” — Kris Kristofferson
Filmmaker Alan Rudolph, who directed Kristofferson in 1984’s Songwriter (as the best buddy of a country music star played by Willie Nelson) and in 1985’s Trouble in Mind (as a mysterious ex-cop and ex-con who serves as the film noir’s antihero), had high praise for his star.
“What’s really smart about Kris,” Rudolph said, “is that he understands what he’s good at and what he can do. You’re staging a scene and ultimately you realize that, unbeknownst even to the person staging the scene, you’re staging around what Kris is comfortable with and what his strengths are. He’s got a terrific range, but he doesn’t have to do a lot to be effective. I saw that in many, many scenes in Trouble in Mind. Whenever the camera got closer to him, the movie got better.”
Did Kristofferson have any favorite films on his resume? “Some pretty disparate ones,” Kristofferson said. “Lone Star, I think. When I met [director] John Sayles, I told him, ‘Look, I have to ask you: Why did you consider me for this character, Charlie Wade? Because he’s everything that I’ve taught my kids not to be.’ But I guess there was enough there that I could identify with to make the guy believable. And that was a great opportunity.
“And A Star is Born – I think I did a good job in that. And I liked Songwriter because of the people in it, the music in it, what it was about. And A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries – absolutely one of the finest pieces of work I got to be in.
“I was probably the shakiest going into Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Because the character, as I read him, should have been the age of Clark Gable in The Misfits. Like, this old, crusty rancher. I didn’t feel I had the weight or the maturity that this guy needed. But fortunately, I still wanted to do it because I had screened Mean Streets, and I saw everybody in it was good. So I figured Marty Scorsese must be pretty good with actors. And he was.”
Chalk up the experience as one more lesson that Kris Kristofferson took to heart as he continued to keep it real.
