Body of Spalding Gray found

The decayed body of the actor, who had been missing for several weeks and was rumored to have leapt from the Staten Island Ferry, was recovered from New York Harbor this morning. He had been suffering from depression and the lasting effects of a 2001 auto accident..

I saw Gray perform twice, the first time in about 1980 before he really started getting famous. At the time, I was on the crew of a play at a theater in North Beach, and the actors in the play -- most of them from L.A. and well-entrenched in the acting world -- spoke rapturously of Gray and how he could hold a crowd for hours just sitting in a chair and telling stories. He came to the theater later that summer and gave a weekend's worth of performances. The one I saw was called something like "A Life in the Theater" and consisted entirely of anecdotes about plays he'd been in. It was a marvelous show.