However, by the time “Heaven’s Gate” crashed and burned at the box office, alcohol and drug abuse had laid the hard-living performer low personally. He told the Guardian in 2008 that at the time he finally cut back on his drinking following his split with Coolidge, “[the] doctor said my liver was the size of a football and that if I didn’t quit, I was gonna kill myself.”
His renascent music and film careers proceeded steadily, if not spectacularly in comparison to his early stardom, from the ‘80s onward. Acting served as his principal focus in later years, though he continued to tour regularly. His recordings for Mercury Records, “Repossessed” (1986) and “Third World Warrior” (1990), contained outspoken statements of his left-tilting political views.
His deeds often spoke just as loudly. Just two weeks after Sinead O’Connor ripped up a photo of Pope John Paul on “Saturday Night Live” in 1992, she walked onstage at Madison Square Garden to perform at a tribute concert for Bob Dylan, to tumultuous boos and hecking. Kristofferson, who had introduced her as an “artist whose name has become synonymous with courage and integrity,” had been asked to get her off the stage. Instead, he did the opposite.“I was not about to do that,” Kristofferson said in 2010 on the Irish talk show “Saturday Night With Miriam.”
