Trivia

His mother committed suicide in 1967; Gray sometimes referred in his monologues to a desire to do the same.

His depression worsened when his family moved from the house he loved in Sag Harbor to one he hated in New Haven.

Was reported missing on Sunday, January 10, 2004. His body was found in the East River (New York City) on March 7, 2004.

Suffered severe injuries in a 2001 automobile accident in Ireland. At the time of his disappearance in January 2004, it was reported that Gray had been working on a new monologue based upon his experience and recovery after the accident. According to some published reports, Gray suffered from depression which intensified after the accident.

After being reported missing on January 10th, the police pulled his body from the East River at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 07, 2004. The body was found off the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, near Kent Avenue. (March 2004)

Said that only his children could make him laugh

Had two sons with Kathleen Russo: Forrest and Theo.

Gray - a manic depressive who has twice attempted suicide - had tried jumping off a ferry in September but was stopped by a friend, sources said.

He frequently played doctors and professors.

All of Spalding Gray's monologues were initially performed in The Performing Garage in Soho in New York City and/or Lincoln Center in New York City before being set to film.

Reported missing after disappearing from his Manhattan home. (January 2004)

Best known for his monologue films Swimming to Cambodia (1987), Monster in a Box (1992), and Gray's Anatomy (1996), in which the sole action in the film is Gray sitting at a microphone telling his stories.

The directors of the filmed versions of Gray's monologues Swimming to Cambodia (1987), Spalding Gray: Terrors of Pleasure (1987), Monster in a Box (1992) and Gray's Anatomy (1996) , are all considered to be of the first rank: respectively Jonathan Demme, Thomas Schlamme (multi Emmy-winning producer and director of À la Maison Blanche (1999)), Nick Broomfield (renowned British documentary maker) and Steven Soderbergh.

(November 1999 - January 2000) New monologue at Lincoln Center, "Morning, Noon and Night"

Steven Soderbergh made a documentary film about Gray's life titled And Everything Is Going Fine (2010).

Graduated from Emerson College.

Biography/bibliography in "Contemporary Authors," New Revision Series, vol. 138, pages 184-190. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2005.

Gray received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the National Book Award in 1985 for this work.

When Gray was first reported missing, his profile was featured on the Fox Network television show America's Most Wanted.

Biography in "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives," Volume 7, 2003-2005, pages 215-218. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007.

An unfinished monologue and a selection from his journals were published in 2005 and 2011, respectively.

The 2016 season of the Independent Film Channel's mockumentary television series Documentary Now! includes the episode "Parker Gail's Location is Everything," a parody of Gray's Swimming to Cambodia. In it, Bill Hader delivers a monologue expressing his dismay at having to find a new loft apartment in New York City upon learning that his current residence will be converted into an electronics store.

He continued to write and perform monologues until his death. Through 1993, these works often incorporated his relationship to his girlfriend Renée Shafransky. They married and she became his collaborator.

Gray's disappearance has taken his wife by surprise because the worst of his depression seemed to be over.

In 1965, Gray moved to San Francisco, California, where he became a speaker and teacher of poetry at the Esalen Institute.

Gray's books Impossible Vacation and Sex and Death to the Age 14 are largely based on his childhood and early adulthood.

Gray began his theater career in New York in the late 1960s. In 1970, he joined Richard Schechner's experimental troupe, The Performance Group. With actors from The Performance Group, including Willem Dafoe and Elizabeth LeCompte, Gray helped to co-found the theater company The Wooster Group. He worked with them from 1975 to 1980, before leaving the company to focus on his monologue work.

After graduating from Fryeburg Academy in Fryeburg, Maine, Gray enrolled at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts, as a poetry major.

Theater critics John Willis and Ben Hodges described his monologue work as "trenchant, personal narratives delivered on sparse, unadorned sets with a dry, WASP, quiet mania.

He earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1963.