Kris Kristofferson was born into a military officer’s family in Texas. He showed an enormous breadth of talent already at school: he managed the school newspaper, wrote poems and songs, sang, but also successfully played American football and boxed.
He managed to get a prestigious scholarship and went to Oxford to study in the late 1950s. Here he devoted himself to English literature, especially the work of William Shakespeare and William Blake. He later confided in an interview that it was Blake who had the greatest influence on him: “Blake wanted to be an artist because he believed that if you were destined to be an artist, it was your moral duty to become an artist, otherwise it would haunt you throughout your life.” life… and even after death, all eternity.”
However, his path to fame and art was certainly not straightforward. After returning from Oxford, he harbored ambitions to write literature for a while, but eventually followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the army. As a helicopter pilot, he made it to the rank of captain, later he was supposed to teach literature at the military academy at West Point, but by then he had already decided to leave the army and go to Nashville.
