Spalding Gray Missing

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040113/ap_on_en_mo/people_actor_missing_3

NEW YORK - Actor-writer Spalding Gray has been reported missing, police said.

Police in New York City and in Southampton, N.Y., where the actor keeps his primary home, were searching for the actor. No further details were immediately available and the investigation was ongoing early Tuesday, said Sgt. Michael Wysokowski, an NYPD spokesman.

Gray's disappearance was reported Sunday, according to a story in Tuesday editions of the New York Times.

Gray, perhaps best known for writing and appearing in the autobiographical film "Swimming to Cambodia" (1987), had a history of depression and had tried to commit suicide in 2002, the Times reported.

His brother, Rockwell Gray, a professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis, said he had last seen the actor around Christmas.

"I wouldn't say he was in a happy state," Rockwell Gray told the newspaper. But "it wasn't unusual. He's been in a fairly depressed condition for some time."

Gray's wife, Kathleen Russo, told the Times she had been waiting for information about him but would not discuss his disappearance.

Gray co-founded the experimental Wooster Group theater in New York in 1977. He has appeared in such films as "Kate & Leopold" (2001), "The Paper" (1994) and "Beaches" (1988).

Hope he's okay, but somehow I doubt it.

I really enjoyed both Swimming To Cambodia and Monster In A Box.

[lone_groover]

Hope he turns up, but it doesn't sound good at all.

:(

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Hadn't heard the news until Meesh posted this on crapwagon:

Confirmed: Body Found in East River is that of Spalding Gray
(New York-WABC, March 8, 2004)

The New York City medical examiner's office has confirmed that the body pulled out of East River Sunday is that of missing actor-writer Spalding Gray. Gray disappeared on January 10th. He was 62-years-old.

Several reliable witnesses told authorities they believed they saw him on the Staten Island Ferry the night he vanished. He had a history of suicide attempts.

Authorities said early Monday that the body found in the East River was too badly decomposed to identify easily. Police reportedly could only say at first that the deceased was a white man.

The only piece of clothing that could be identified was a pair of black corduroy pants. When Gray disappeared January 10th, he was wearing black corduroy pants, a gray jacket, blue scarf, brown sweater and brown shoes. He was identified through dental records and x-rays.

Gray laid bare his life and mingled performance art with comedy in acclaimed monologues like "Swimming to Cambodia" and "It's a Slippery Slope."

His 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 accent. 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."

The cause of his death was still under investigation, said Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner. But Gray was known to have been deeply troubled and had attempted suicide before.

Throughout his disappearance, his wife, Kathleen Russo, had held out scant hope that he might still be alive. "Everyone that looks like him from behind, I go up and check to make sure it's not him," Russo said in a phone interview with The Associated Press about a week ago. "If someone calls and hangs up, I always do star-69. You're always thinking, 'maybe."'