US actor and singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson has died aged 88.

Family spokeswoman Ebie McFarland said in an email to the Associated Press that Kristofferson died peacefully, surrounded by family at his home in Maui, Hawaii.

Kristofferson, who was from Texas, was known for many songs including 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 when performed by others, whether Ray Price crooning For the Good Times or Janis Joplin belting out Me and Bobby McGee.

He also 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 alongside peers such as Willie Nelson, John Prine and Tom T. Hall.

"There's no better songwriter alive than Kris Kristofferson," Nelson said during a November 2009 award ceremony for Kristofferson held by BMI. 

"Everything he writes is a standard and we're all just going to have to live with that."

He was a Golden Gloves boxer and football player in college, received a master's degree in English from Merton College at the University of Oxford in England and turned down an appointment to teach at the US 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. Johnny Cash liked to tell a mostly exaggerated story of how Kristofferson, a former US Army pilot, landed a helicopter on Cash's lawn to give him a tape of Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down with a beer in one hand. 

In interviews over the years, Kristofferson said that while he did land a helicopter at Cash's house, the entertainer was not home at the time, the demo tape was a song that no-one ever actually cut, and he certainly could not 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 with Performing Songwriter magazine 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 number-one hit for Joplin.

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.

He retired from performing and recording in 2021, making only occasional guest appearances on stage.

Kristofferson and his third wife, Lisa, whom he married in 1983, lived on the Hawaiian island of Maui for more than 30 years. 

He had eight children.

AP