35 Facts About Spalding Gray

Spalding Gray was an American actor, novelist, playwright, screenwriter and performance artist.

Spalding Gray is best known for the autobiographical monologues that he wrote and performed for the theater in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as for his film adaptations of these works, beginning in 1987.

Spalding Gray wrote and starred in several, working with different directors.

Spalding Gray died by suicide at the age of 62 after jumping into New York Harbor on January 11,2004.

Spalding Gray had been struggling with depression and severe injuries following a car accident.

Spalding Rockwell Gray was born in Providence, Rhode Island, to Rockwell Gray Sr.

Spalding Gray was the second of three sons; his brothers were Rockwell Jr.

Spalding Gray earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1963.

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

In 1967, while Spalding Gray was vacationing in Mexico City, his mother committed suicide at age 52.

Spalding Gray began his theater career in New York in the late 1960s.

Spalding Gray worked with it from 1975 to 1980, before leaving the company to focus on his monologue work.

Spalding Gray first attained prominence in the United States with the film version of his monologue Swimming to Cambodia.

Spalding Gray had performed this monologue in New York City and published it as a book in 1985.

Spalding Gray adapted it as a film in 1987, directed by Jonathan Demme.

Spalding Gray wrote an unproduced screenplay based on the experience.

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

Spalding Gray continued to write and perform monologues until his death.

Spalding Gray played the lead role of the Stage Manager in a high-profile 1988 revival of Thornton Wilder's play Our Town at the Lincoln Center Theater.

Spalding Gray wrote a subsequent monologue, Monster in a Box, about his experiences in writing and promoting Impossible Vacation.

In June 2001, Spalding Gray was severely injured in a car crash while on vacation in Ireland.

Spalding Gray struggled to recover from his injuries and a severe depression set in some time after the accident.

Spalding Gray sought treatment from neurologist Oliver Sacks, who began treating him in August 2003 and continued to do so almost until Spalding Gray died.

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

Spalding Gray was reported to have been working on a new monologue at the time of his death.

Spalding Gray was buried at Oakland Cemetery in Sag Harbor, New York.

Spalding Gray was survived by his wife Kathie Russo, stepdaughter Marissa, sons Forrest Dylan and Theo Spalding Gray, and brothers Rockwell and Channing Gray.

Spalding Gray broke it all down to a table, a glass of water, a spiral notebook and a mic.

Spalding Gray sitting at that table, speaking into the mic, calling forth the script of his life from his memory and those notebooks.

Spalding Gray went for the misery sufficiently deep to create a story that makes us laugh.

Spalding Gray remains the antihero in his own fascinating life story, the never ending tale of EverySpalding.

The 2007 play Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell, produced at the Minetta Lane Theatre in New York City, is based on his monologues and journals.

Russo said that Soderbergh "wanted Spalding Gray to tell the story, as if it was his last monologue, and I think he accomplished that".

In 2011 a selection from his journals was published as The Journals of Spalding Gray, edited by Nell Casey, who had worked with Russo on the project.

Spalding Gray said they have value as a "portrait of a theatrical coming of age" as Gray determined how to make his art.