America's second-favorite Rhodes scholar has some advice for Rhodes scholar No. 1: "It's okay to step on your d---, Mr. President, just don't stand on it."

Kris Kristofferson knows a thing or two about stepping and standing. After surviving the '70s two-step of sex symbol and substance abuser, he's settled into the most unexpected gig of his career: grandpa. At 62, the face that once drove groupies to distraction now resembles a satellite photograph of the Grand Canyon. "I feel pretty good...," he says, looking dapper in a black Italian suit, "...for an old man."

Kristofferson--perhaps the only living human to experience the three Gs of American greatness: Grammy, Golden Globe, and Golden Glove--is back on the proverbial roll. For the past few weeks, he's been a grizzled vampire hunter in Blade, now biting its way toward $65 million; it's the first time the words Kristofferson and big box office have been mentioned together in 20 years. Thanks to Blade, it's also the first time you can buy a Kris Kristofferson action figure at your local toy store."Sounds wonderful, doesn't it?" he sighs. "Only it makes me tired right now."

He'd better get some rest. This week, Kris Kristofferson version 2.0 kicks into gear. In his biggest leading role since 1980, when he nearly drowned on the sinking ship that was Heaven's Gate, Kristofferson has top billing in A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries, the latest effort by the genteel filmmaking duo of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory (see review on page 77). In coming months, he'll team up with Mel Gibson in Payback, Martin Landau in The Joyriders, and Brenda Blethyn (Secrets & Lies) in Girls' Night. Not to mention his new CD, The Austin Sessions, due soon. It's hard to believe this orange-juice-sipping father of eight is the same man who in 1976 appeared nude in Playboy with actress Sarah Miles (his costar in The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea). "My life has tidied itself so much," he says, absently tugging on his mustache. "I don't have to worry about practicing what I preach. I don't get drunk, I don't smoke grass, I don't do anything illegal anymore."

Kris Kristofferson's early life once resembled a drunken tug-of-war. Born to a strict military family in Brownsville, Tex., he made it to the Golden Gloves tournament as an undergrad at Pomona College in 1958, but junked boxing to study poetry at Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship. In a nod to his upbringing, he dropped out, joined the ROTC, learned to pilot helicopters, and requested a transfer to Vietnam. The Army counteroffered with a promotion, a ticket to West Point, and a job teaching English. "It was the perfect assignment," he remembers, "if you wanted to be a career officer." His heart, however, was in the Nashville songwriting scene. He headed south with his first wife, Fran, and their two kids.

To pay the rent (and later, the child support), Kristofferson flew oil helicopters and swept floors in a recording studio (he served as janitor during the recording of Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde). With a little help from Johnny Cash, his growing songwriting reputation led to a record deal, which led to a series of hits like "Help Me Make It Through the Night" and "Me and Bobby McGee." His charismatic stage presence led to movie offers. By 1975, he'd worked with Martin Scorsese (Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore) and Sam Peckinpah (Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia), shared a stage with Jimi Hendrix, and dated Barbra Streisand and Janis Joplin. He had four gold records, two Grammies, and so much booze in his veins that he was observed falling asleep on stage.

By the time Kristofferson landed the lead in A Star Is Born (1976), the drug-addled-sex-symbol thing was a simple case of art imitating life. (He actually won the role from the equally overloaded Elvis Presley.) While filming the movie's hot-tub scene with Streisand, Kristofferson denied the orders of coproducer Jon Peters--Streisand's boyfriend at the time--and went naked under the bubbles. Peters' subsequent tantrum is Hollywood lore. "I think Jon would have liked to have me in a wet suit," says Kristofferson, "but I was kind of a rogue." Audiences responded to the frisson. The film, made for $4.5 million, grossed over $70 million; the soundtrack went quadruple platinum.

Just two years after A Star Is Born was released, director Michael Cimino (hot off The Deer Hunter), offered Kristofferson the lead in Heaven's Gate, a dark allegory of the American West. The star had recently endured a vicious split from his second wife (singer Rita Coolidge, the mother of his third child), and Cimino encouraged Kristofferson to "walk through the film in pain." Talk about pain. The film was a resounding commercial and critical disaster; bombarded with bad press, Kristofferson and Cimino were abandoned by United Artists.

"I look at it now as an assassination," Kristofferson recalls. "Poor Michael, it was like watching your baby ripped up in front of you, then having it blamed on you."

After Heaven's Gate tanked, things really started going south. Kristofferson's longtime manager and agent both died; his record label went bankrupt and took his latest album with it. "I sort of found myself adrift." He spent much of the next 15 years working in less-than-memorable projects--Big Top Pee-wee, for example--while concert-ticket sales waned. "I got kind of tired of beating my head against a wall."

And then, three years ago, just when bottom seemed closer than top, filmmaker John Sayles cast Kristofferson as a murderous sheriff in Lone Star. "That kind of jump-started my acting career," says Kristofferson. In fact, it led to A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries, the adaptation of Kaylie Jones' 1990 memoir about growing up with her famous father, author James Jones (From Here to Eternity). Merchant and Ivory originally cast Nick Nolte as the dad, but in a novelistic twist, he backed out for a role in director Terrence Malick's upcoming adaptation of The Thin Red Line, another James Jones novel.

"I called up Terrence to say 'What's going on?!'" says Ivory. "But after we got Kris, I don't think we gave much sincere thought to anyone else." "I felt very daughterly toward Kris," adds Kaylie Jones. "I said, 'Would you adopt me?' But he's already got too many kids."

Seeing the film, it's odd to watch this former playboy advising his on-screen daughter on the facts of life--a speech he's already given to a few of his own children, who range in age from 4 to 36 (he and his third wife, Lisa, have had five children). "I think it's easier for an old man to be a good father," says Kristofferson, who makes his home in Maui. "When I was young, I was too busy scrambling to find out who I was."

He isn't completely done scrambling. Undeterred by a fresh crop of film offers, he's now preparing to write a novel. "The best material may be right in front of my nose," he says. "My wife's always wanting me to write my life down. We sit around like Othello and Desdemona and I charm her with my tales. I think I might do it. We'll see. Someone once said to me, 'You may not write the great novel, but you sure have lived it.'"

-Andrew Essex