Los Angeles: Kris Kristofferson, a Rhodes scholar with a deft writing style and rough charisma who became a country music superstar and A-list Hollywood actor, has died.

Kristofferson died at his home in Maui, Hawaii on Saturday, family spokeswoman Ebie McFarland said in an email. He was 88.

McFarland said Kristofferson died peacefully, surrounded by his family. No cause was given.

Starting in the late 1960s, the Brownsville, Texas native wrote such classics standards as Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down, and Help Me Make it Through the Night. Kristofferson was a singer himself, but many of his songs were best known as performed by others, whether Ray Price crooning For the Good Times” or Janis Joplin belting out Me and Bobby McGee.

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 along with such peers as Willie Nelson, John Prine and Tom T. Hall.

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“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.”

Nelson and Kristofferson would join forces with Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings to create the country supergroup The Highwaymen starting in the mid-1980s.