Spalding Gray

NEW YORK - Actor-writer Spalding Gray, who laid bare his life and mingled performance art with comedy in acclaimed monologues like "Swimming to Cambodia," was found dead over the weekend, two months after he walked out of his Manhattan apartment and disappeared. He was 62.

Gray's body was pulled from the East River and was identified Monday through dental records and X-rays. The cause of his death was still under investigation, according to a spokeswoman for the medical examiner. But Gray had a history of depression and attempted suicide in 2002.

His family told police he was last seen Jan. 10.

"We're hoping now that we have some closure," his wife, Kathleen Russo, said from the couple's Long Island home. "The family will begin to heal."

Gray's riveting live performances generally featured only a desk and a glass of water as props. Usually wearing his trademark plaid flannel shirt, the performer would never move from the desk as he read in a soft, New England-flecked accent.

He worked in underground theater in Manhattan, eventually co-founding the Wooster Group in 1979. There, he wrote an autobiographical trilogy of plays about life in Rhode Island.

In more than a dozen monologues starting in 1979, Gray told audiences about his childhood, "Sex and Death to the Age 14"; his adventures as a young man, "Booze, Cars and College Girls"; and his struggles as an actor, "A Personal History of the American Theater." Many were published in book form and several were made into films.

"The man may be the ultimate WASP neurotic, analyzing his actions with an intensity that would be unpleasantly egomaniacal if it weren't so self-deprecatingly funny," Associated Press Drama Critic Michael Kuchwara wrote in 1996. "He questions everything and ends up more exhausted than satisfied."

Gray's greatest success was his Obie-winning monologue "Swimming to Cambodia," which recounted in part his movie role opposite Sam Waterston in "The Killing Fields." The monologue, developed over two years of performance, became a film directed by Jonathan Demme.

In the theater, he starred as the stage manager in the 1989 revival of "Our Town," a production that won a Tony Award for best revival.

"Spalding had an affinity with that material and its enormous sadness and wistfulness about lost opportunities and the mysteries of the universe," said "Our Town" revival director Gregory Mosher. "That probably was Spalding's main subject, wasn't it? Writing and thinking about the mysteries of life and death."

Gray's life in recent years was marred by tragedy and depression.

A horrific head-on car crash during a 2001 vacation in Ireland to mark his 60th birthday left him disheartened and in poor health, and he tried jumping from a bridge near his Long Island home in October 2002.

Gray, whose mother committed suicide when she was 52, spoke openly about considering the same fate. In a 1997 interview, he even provided an epitaph for his tombstone: "An American Original: Troubled, Inner-Directed and Cannot Type."

Gray was born on June 5, 1941, one of three sons growing up in Barrington, R.I. His mother suffered a pair of nervous breakdowns, committing suicide in 1967 after the second one.

In the monologue "It's a Slippery Slope," Gray told his audience he had to overcome a deep depression associated with his turning 52 — his mother's age when she took her own life.

He is survived by Russo; three children; and two brothers, Rockwell Gray, an English professor in St. Louis, and Channing Gray. A memorial service will be held in a couple of months, Russo said Monday.


Copyright © 2004 The Associated Press