Born in Barrington, Rhode Island, in 1941, Gray had never done much except theatre. In Houston, and then off-Broadway, he had had small parts, often in modern plays. But he was not an outstanding actor – by which I mean to say that while he was very thoroughly an actor, and believable, he did not at first seem available for large, commanding parts. He did not have the spectacular energy that can play Lear or Hamlet. He was much more suitable as Rosencrantz or Guildenstern, or the Fool in Lear, an onlooker at the big scenes, and someone with a dry but valuable point of view.

He needed to act, I dare say, but not to be caught or praised for it. His contentment was in the trick working, so that no one in the audience ever felt tricked, or wowed.He worked with small experimental companies – the Performance Group and the Wooster Group – and he had done a trilogy of plays about growing up in Rhode Island, regular plays, with casts and scenery etc, and Gray was near enough the actor suited to play the lead. But then something happened, 20 years or so ago, where Gray the actor yielded to Gray the writer, and found that the former had written for him – or unloaded on him – this immense part, that of delivering the monologue. From that moment, Gray chose to come on stage, sit down at a plain desk or table, and tell stories – or talk about himself. Which was it?This seemed odd, for it could easily look like enormous vanity, in which Spalding Gray surpassed the difficulties of getting good parts on stage by assuming the only part. And because he talked about things that were very like those that happened to the real Spalding Gray, it was possible to conclude that the motor of his art was self-centred.

But then there was that strange feeling that Gray was up there talking about himself as part of the process of escape. From himself.It wasn’t to everyone’s taste, and that was because a lot of us need to know where we are with actors, we need to have safe boundaries. It may have made Spalding Gray difficult company for others – from the immediate outside, as it were. But it left little doubt that the view from the inside – his own – was every bit as problematic.Over the years, Gray had small parts in movies.

He was in Almost You, True Stories, Stars and Bars, Beaches, Heavy Petting, King of the Hill, The Paper, Beyond Rangoon and Diabolique. He was fine, not sharply memorable, but fading into the texture of the movie Very real. It was from one of those films, The Killing Fields, that he fashioned his first great monologue – the work that made “Spalding Gray” famous – in which he reflects on the different worlds and attitudes of Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and attempts to make a faithful film about it. He was a witness from different hells – our real extremity and our unreal urge – and he was ghostly already. You can see that now.That first monologue was called Swimming to Cambodia (and Jonathan Demme would make a notable film of it), but what meant the most to Gray was done on stage His grip tightened if you were there in the room with him. The other shows were Monster in a Box (about writing a novel – Gray did write one, called Impossible Vacation – and Monster… was later made into a film directed by Nick Broomfield), Gray’s Anatomy, It’s A Slippery Slope, Point Judith and his last show, Interrupted Life.He was candid in these shows without being a show-off: he discussed his infidelity to women, without ever seeking justification or forgiveness And it became clear that he was not well He was depressed.