NEW YORK -- Actor-writer Spalding Gray, who laid bare his life in a series of acclaimed monologues like "Swimming to Cambodia" while scoring big-screen success in "Kate and Leopold" and "The Paper," was confirmed dead on Monday.

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The body of Gray, 62, was pulled out of the East River off Greenpoint, Brooklyn, on Sunday, two months after he walked out of his Manhattan apartment and disappeared. Several witnesses had told police they saw Gray on the Staten Island ferry the night he vanished, and his wife, Kathleen Russo, had said she feared he jumped off the boat.

The city medical examiner confirmed through dental records and X-rays on Monday that it was Gray's body. The cause of his death was still under investigation, said Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner.

Russo said the family was "deeply saddened."

"We're hoping now that we have some closure," she said from the couple's home on Long Island. "The family will begin to heal."

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

Gray, whose riveting live performances generally featured only a desk and a glass of water as props, was reported missing by Russo on Jan. 11.

His greatest success was his Obie-winning monologue "Swimming to Cambodia," which recounted in part his movie role opposite Sam Waterston in "The Killing Fields." The monologue, developed over two years of performance, became a film directed by Jonathan Demme.

But Gray's life in recent years was marred by tragedy and depression.

A horrific head-on car crash during a 2001 vacation in Ireland left him disheartened and in poor health, and he tried jumping from a bridge near his Long Island home in October 2002.

He was twice hospitalized for depression after the crash, and his suicide attempt canceled the run of a new solo piece, "Black Spot."

Gray, whose mother committed suicide when she was 52, spoke openly about considering the same fate. In a 1997 interview, he even provided an epitaph for his tombstone: "An American Original: Troubled, Inner-Directed and Cannot Type."

Gray was born on June 5, 1941, one of three sons born to a WASP couple in Barrington, R.I. His mother suffered a pair of nervous breakdowns, committing suicide in 1967 after the second one.

Prior to her death, Gray began pursuing an acting career at Emerson College in Boston. His first efforts at one-man storytelling began with a select audience: his co-workers when he was a dishwasher. The compulsively self-obsessed Gray would regale the other employees with a blow-by-blow account of his day's events.

He landed his first stage role, playing a psychotic in a summer stock production of "The Curious Savage," when a combination of his dyslexia and nerves produced an all too real audition.

His mother's suicide sent Gray into a lengthy period of depression that ended with his own nervous breakdown. He worked in underground theater in Manhattan, eventually co-founding the Wooster Group in 1979. There, he wrote an autobiographical trilogy of plays about life in Rhode Island.

His first monologue was "Sex and Death to Age 14," mingling events like the bombing of Hiroshima with the death of childhood pets. Gray was hailed as a new brand of performance artist, working alone on a minimalist set.

In 1983, Gray won the role of an American ambassador's aide in "The Killing Fields," the story of the bond between a New York Times reporter and a Cambodian photographer. The experience led to his monologue "Swimming to Cambodia."

The monologue was widely hailed, with Washington Post reviewer David Richards observing, "Talking about himself -- with candor, humor, imagination and the unfailingly bizarre image -- he ends up talking about all of us."

Gray continued working both alone and in Hollywood, appearing in the David Byrne film "True Stories" as well as other movies that included "Beaches" and "The Paper" -- 38 film appearances in all.

In 1989, he starred as the stage manager in the Broadway revival of "Our Town," a production that won a Tony.

"Spalding had an affinity with that material and its enormous sadness and wistfulness about lost opportunities and the mysteries of the universe," said Gregory Mosher, who directed the "Our Town" revival at the Lincoln Center Theater. "That probably was Spalding's main subject, wasn't it? Writing and thinking about the mysteries of life and death."

Gray turned a mid-life crisis into "It's a Slippery Slope," a 1997 monologue that mingled ski stories with tales of his new role as a father.

In addition to his writing, Gray enjoyed skiing and drinking; he once told an interviewer that a 6 p.m. bloody Mary was a staple of his routine. But Gray plunged back into despondency following his car accident, a crash during a vacation to mark his 60th birthday.

Gray, who was not wearing a seat belt, suffered head trauma and a broken hip in the crash. He suffered lingering physical pain and emotional woes, attempting the bridge leap near his Long Island home.

Russo has two sons, ages 11 and 6, and a stepdaughter with Gray. Gray also is survived by two brothers, Rockwell Gray, an English professor in St. Louis, and Channing Gray.

Russo said a memorial service would be held in a couple of months.

"Right now," she said Monday, "the family's just going to mourn in private."