Sixty-some movies later, Kris Kristofferson says, "Acting is still fun. Talking about it is not."
Kristofferson, 69, seems happy enough talking about Dreamer: Inspired By A True Story, in which he plays Dakota Fanning's grandfather. The movie brought him to Toronto during the film festival.
Actually, Kristofferson talks about acting and singing and songwriting, as he's done all three more or less simultaneously throughout his career. He has recorded 30 solo albums. If you ask him, however, he'd probably describe himself as a writer first and foremost. That's how he started out.
"And then the acting and the performing of music both happened at once and quite suddenly and it was like stepping onto a roller coaster."
Kristofferson talks about the experience, circa 1970, of reading about and admiring people like Sam Peckinpah one day and then working with them the next, all of it growing out of a successful gig at the Troubador in Los Angeles.
Among the actors and filmmakers who caught him there was Harry Dean Stanton, who brought Kristofferson the script for what would become his first major movie, Cisco Pike. The film also starred Karen Black and Gene Hackman, he says, "And a lot of people I'd been admiring from afar.
"I was plunged into performing my music and in front of a camera at the same time, without any training to do either. I was learning on the job and learning to appreciate it more and more as I went on."
Kristofferson just laughs when questioned about playing Kurt Russell's father in Dreamer -- Russell being only 15 years his junior. "What people think of me doesn't really matter to me anymore. This ain't for sissies," he says, laughing. "But of course you care," he adds. "When you invest your emotional energy in something, you hope it will be well received."
The star of A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries, the Blade trilogy, Lone Star, Trouble In Mind, Limbo, Payback, Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid, A Star Is Born and Heaven's Gate, among dozens of others, says he is still writing songs, "And I'll probably be writing songs until they throw dirt on me."
He adds, "It's the way I react to my experience, organize it and make sense of it. A lot of stuff is from current events, which is not always happy these days."
Later, Kristofferson talks about the Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line, another film, like Dreamer, that was at the film festival this past September. He says he's a bit nervous about seeing the movie, mostly because Cash was a good friend. The two men met when Kristofferson, who was once a pilot, landed a helicopter on Cash's lawn in a bid to get Cash to hear his songs. (Cash went on to record Kristofferson's Sunday Morning Coming Down, which was voted Song Of The Year by the Country Music Association in 1970.)
And one of Kristofferson's sons is named for Johnny Cash, which brings him to the subject of his eight children. Work and parenting are very hard to balance, he says, "Because there is a point in your life when you're trying to be a creative artist and make a living at it, and you have to be selfish. Fortunately for me, I have had children as an older person, too, when I'm old enough to appreciate them. The older I get, the more important my family gets to me. They go with me everywhere. The only two that aren't in college are with me, now, here. And my 14-year-old daughter got to ride on the elevator yesterday with Orlando Bloom, so there are certain side benefits. She just put her face in her hands," he says, fondly, laughing and covering his face to show his daughter's reaction to seeing a movie star.
Later, summing up his good fortune, Kristofferson says, "I am a spiritual man. I'm not into organized religion, but I believe any serious person has to have a spiritual foundation. I am very grateful for the abilities I have, to be creative. I think that's God-given. I think it's my responsiblity to do as much with it as I can."
