Facing Mortality: Eric Dane’s Tragic Reality Amid ALS Battle

Eric Dane had the perfect body, and he wasn’t shy about using it.

The actor’s brief 2006 scene in Grey’s Anatomy as Dr Mark Sloan – charming Ellen Pompeo’s Dr Meredith Grey and getting punched by her boyfriend Patrick Dempsey – was supposed to be a one-off. 

Yet his matinee idol looks and the twinkle in his eye electrified viewers: the show’s creator Shonda Rhimes was so inundated with fan mail that she made Dane’s character a permanent fixture. The persistence paid off when, several seasons later, he emerged from a steam-filled bathroom naked except for a tiny white towel held around his waist. Thus, ‘McSteamy’ was born.

A little over a decade later and he was smoldering his way into the hearts of a new generation – this time, in the cult teen drama Euphoria. Dane played Jacob Elordi’s father – a broodingly handsome closeted gay man, pursuing risky liaisons in motels.

He was, Glamour magazine declared, the ‘most sexualized man in Hollywood.’

All of which makes the photos this week of a gaunt and rigid Dane in a wheelchair even harder to bear.

Dane, 52, announced that he had been diagnosed with the rare and fatal degenerative disease Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or ALS, in April. It is a disease for which there is currently no cure.

According to those close to the actor he has, in recent months, been forced to face his own mortality.

Speaking exclusively to the Daily Mail, a source said: ‘Nobody wants to think about or address their own mortality, but that is exactly what Eric is going through now.

‘He knows his fate and is trying to figure out how he wants to enjoy life, how to be a beacon of hope and help others who are struggling themselves. He also wants to enjoy being with family and friends and actually take this time to live.’

Dane has described his diagnosis as shattering but has vowed to fight hard.

‘Keep the faith, man,’ he said this week as he motored through the Washington DC airport. Dane was in the capital to meet with California congressman Eric Swalwell and Mike Quigley of Illinois, who since 2021 has been trying to pass an ALS research funding bill.

ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s, is a relatively rare type of motor neuron disease and little understood. Around 5,000 Americans a year are diagnosed, and symptoms are often hard to spot.

Dane began noticing weakness in his right hand in early 2024 and initially thought he had ‘been texting too much or my hand was fatigued.’ He visited several specialists before the condition was confirmed, in April this year. In June, he lost the use of his right arm.

Life expectancy after diagnosis is usually around three to five years – although Stephen Hawking survived for over 50. Dane’s decline, however, has been precipitous and agonizing.

Dane is determined to live without fear, despite his diagnosis, the source said. ‘So many people take things for granted, so many people don’t do anything because they are scared.’

That doesn’t mean it’s easy.

As a teenager in the Bay Area studying at San Mateo High School (where Alicia Silverstone was a classmate), Dane was a ‘really great’ water polo player who had switched schools to play in a more competitive team. ‘I wasn’t necessarily the best, but I was pretty f***ing good,’ he told podcast host Dax Shepard last year when appearing on his show Armchair Expert.

But when the former swimmer was snorkeling off a boat with his daughters Billie, 15, and Georgia, 13, this year, he quickly got into trouble.

‘When I jumped in the ocean that day and realized I couldn’t swim [or] generate enough power to get myself back to the boat, I thought, “Oh, God,”‘ he told Sawyer. ‘And then I realized, in that moment: I’m not safe in the water anymore.’

Dane panicked, but Georgia realized that her father was in trouble and dragged him back into the boat.

‘I was like breaking down in tears, so I made sure she got back in the water with her friend and continued on with the snorkeling with the guide,’ he said. ‘But I was just heartbroken.’

Georgia and Billie’s mother, Beverly Hills 90210 actress Rebecca Gayheart, has been a rock for Dane – despite their own turbulent tale.

The couple met in 2003: Gayheart, a Kentucky-born former model, had recently ended a 13-year relationship with producer Brett Ratner and was starring in Nip/Tuck, while Dane, who had had small roles in Saved By The Bell, The Wonder Years and Roseanne, had yet to begin Grey’s Anatomy.

They married in Las Vegas in 2004, ten months after meeting, and weathered a tabloid storm in 2009 when a video emerged of the couple naked and frolicking with a former Miss US Teen Kari Ann Peniche, who had been stripped of her crown for posing for Playboy five years previously. The trio were not having sex, but for 12 minutes were roaming around rooms, taking drugs and later lounging together in a hot tub.

Dane and Gayheart sued Gawker, which published the tape, for infringement of copyright and the case was settled out of court in July 2010.

Gayheart gave birth to Billie in March 2010, with Georgia arriving a year later. Dane, whose father died by suicide when he was seven, told People magazine in 2014 that he felt like ‘a very lucky guy’, saying: ‘I never had a family and now I do.’ 

All the while, however, the actor was battling demons.

As a teenager, he began smoking marijuana and says he ‘got sober for the first time’ at the age of 26.

During his Grey’s Anatomy years, from 2006 to 2012, he was abusing drugs, having relapsed during the Writer’s Guild strike of 2007. In 2011, he went to rehab for an addiction to painkillers, which were prescribed for a sports injury.

‘If you take the whole eight years I was on Grey’s Anatomy, I was f***** up longer than I was sober and that was when things started going sideways for me,’ he said, adding that he was ‘let go’ by Rhimes.

‘I wasn’t the same guy they had hired, so I understood when I was let go.’

Dane quickly found work again, playing the captain of a US Navy destroyer in apocalyptic action drama The Last Ship, but he took a hiatus from the show in 2017 to deal with depression.

By 2018, Gayheart and Dane’s marriage had hit the rocks, and she filed for divorce.

They issued a joint statement, noting that ending their 14-year marriage was ‘the best decision’ for their family.

‘We will continue our friendship and work as a team to co-parent our two beautiful girls as they are the most important thing in the world to us,’ they said at the time. ‘We kindly ask that you respect our privacy during this time as we navigate the next phase of our lives.’

Gayheart and their daughters remained at the family home – a $2.4 million farmhouse-style estate in the mountainous Beverly Hills Post Office neighborhood, which they bought in June 2010. And they continued to co-parent, even enjoying family vacations together. In August 2022 the four traveled to Europe, then to Mexico in January 2023, and spent December 2024 together in Hawaii.

‘There’s a new normal for me and my family,’ said Gayheart, a year after the split. ‘And it’s taken us a little bit to get that down. Not going to lie, it hasn’t been easy. But I think what’s exciting is what’s ahead because there are so many different things that could happen now. I mean, we have so many options, and the good news is my kids are happy and healthy.’

When Dane was diagnosed, Gayheart called off the divorce, telling E! on the eve of Dane’s announcement: ‘We are best of friends. We are really close. We are great co-parents. We really figured out the formula to staying a family and I think our kids are benefiting greatly from it and we are as well.’

She added, ‘I think it’s important to not look at a relationship that ends as a failure. It’s just a season. It wasn’t a failure. It was a huge success. We were married for, I mean, we are still married, but together for 15 years and we had two beautiful kids, so I think that’s a successful relationship, and that’s how we look at it.’

The insider told the Daily Mail that Gayheart’s relationship with the father of her children was now ‘nothing short of incredible.’

‘Rebecca made the decision to not hold any grudges once Eric was diagnosed and their co-parenting relationship has provided them with a friendship that is everything Eric needs right now,’ they said.

‘She is there for him in every sense of the word. He doesn’t need full-time care as of yet, but she shows up and helps him out along with their kids, they are all about the same goal and that is to give their kids the best life possible. They both believe doing that together is what is most important – even if they aren’t romantically involved anymore.’

She appears to have remained single throughout their separation; Dane, by contrast, made the most of his freedom.

In November 2024, he began dating 27-year-old actress Priya Jain but reportedly blindsided her by cozying up to a new flame, Texan photographer and filmmaker Janell Shirtcliff, in June.

Gayheart accepts the situation, according to our source.

‘Eric’s girlfriend is more on the level of a companion – they are off-and-on, and don’t have an official distinction with each other,’ the source said, adding that Shirtcliff was ‘friendly with Rebecca, but they aren’t friends that hang out.’

‘Eric is trying to maintain a sense of normalcy in life as much as he can, but it is hard for Janell to think about the future. Everyone is weighing every option, and Eric is looking to be as happy as possible. His relationship with his kids and Rebecca is taking more of a profound importance to his life than dating Janell. Not to say Janell is out of the picture, it is just that they all have a very unique relationship with each other right now.’

Meanwhile, Dane has continued working.

The week after he announced his diagnosis, he was back on set for season three of Euphoria; this time with Sharon Stone as a co-star.

‘Eric and I have been friends for a long time. A long time,’ Stone, 67, previously told Entertainment Tonight. ‘And I actually was like his support staff when he was trying to get the job on Euphoria. So he would come over to my house and give me gluten-free cookies, and we’d sit and discuss it because he really wanted that job.’

For his part, Dane has insisted that he wants to carry on acting as long as possible.

‘I am ready and willing to do just about anything, but I have limitations that I understand will preclude me from playing certain roles,’ he said in June. ‘I’m working on Euphoria. I finished Countdown. As far as that goes, I’m pretty capable.’

While recent photos may indicate that has changed, Dane has vowed to keep fighting.

‘I’m very hopeful,’ he told Sawyer. ‘I don’t think this is the end of my story.

‘In my heart, I don’t feel like this is the end of me.’