Eric Dane had the chiselled look down by the time he was a teenager, his striking face and athletic physique begging for a modelling or acting career.
Acting it would be for the San Francisco local, who caught the performing bug while in high school, where he also excelled in sports.
Dane, 52, explained on the podcast Armchair Psychologist with Dax Shepard in 2024 that he wanted to play water polo in college, but “didn’t have the grades”.
“Academically, I just couldn’t focus and settle down, and I didn’t have great study habits. I always tested well, but that’ll only carry you so far.”
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Instead, he became an actor, going on to spend decades on screen. But Dane’s life behind the scenes and in the spotlight hasn’t been easy.
A life-changing loss
Dane lost his father to suicide when he was seven, and said the grief was difficult at such a young age, particularly as he tried to be strong for his mother.
His father had left the family when Dane was only three. When he was seven, his mother informed him of his father’s death.
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“She woke me up at five in the morning, hysterically crying, so already I was terrified,” he recalled to Shepard.
“She told me, ‘I have to tell you something, but you have to be strong through the tears’, hysterically crying, and she tripled down on that.
“I finally promised her, ‘I’m going to be strong’, and she said, ‘Your father’s dead.’ It was April 1st, 1980.
“My uncle had come over to tell my mother, I think, and I saw him sitting at the dining room table. And I did not want to cry in front of him. I wanted to explode, but I held it all in.”
It was during Dane’s high school years that he first tried alcohol and drugs, including marijuana.
“This is a character defect,” he shared.
“This is how I’ve come to admit that I am culpable in a lot of this, which is I had a sense of justice, and I felt like what was happening to me was unjust at times, and I felt entitled to a lot of stuff.”
A screen star emerges
Dane’s first foray into acting was in amateur stage work, including a school production of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons.
With the acting bug well and truly taking hold, Dane moved to Los Angeles in 1993 and began auditioning for roles.
He was cast in small roles on a series of hit TV series including Saved by the Bell, The Wonder Years, Roseanne, and Married… with Children, among others.
He hadn’t even heard of Saved by the Bell when he was cast.
“I wasn’t that familiar with the show, but I remember there was a weird experience on that. I learned something very valuable on that set,” he shared.
“We did some take, and I think I was getting hit by a volleyball and falling out of frame. I didn’t like the way that I had done it. I yelled, ‘Cut, cut, cut,'” Dane recalled.
He said the director pulled him aside to explain he was the only one allowed to say “cut”.
Lesson learned, Dane continued building his career.
His first recurring role was in 2000’s Gideon’s Crossing, followed by two seasons playing Jason Dean in Charmed.
Dane also starred in made-for-TV movies including Serving in Silence in 1995, and Helter Skelter in 2004.
While he was making a decent living as a working actor, he wouldn’t reach the height of his fame until he was 33 and was cast as Dr Mark Sloan, or ‘McSteamy’, on the hit TV series Grey’s Anatomy in 2005.
Just a year before scoring the role of a lifetime, Dane had married actress Rebecca Gayheart.
Gayheart was a successful actress in her own right when they met in 2003, having starred in several movies and TV series.
Dane told Flaunt magazine his pickup line was nothing flash, telling the publication he asked Gayheart, “You wanna go out?” to which she replied, “Yeah, sure.”
An ongoing battle
Dane says his battle with substance abuse continued throughout his career.
His father had been an alcoholic, and the actor would go on to develop an addiction to painkillers that began with treatment for a sporting injury. He also battled mental ill health.
Dane believes his battle with addiction contributed to his firing from Grey’s Anatomy.
The first attempt to get sober “that stuck” came when he was 28, after one season of Gideon’s Crossing, at a treatment centre in Pasadena.
“It was a good stretch. I got out, and it was a soft landing. My best friend had gotten sober three months before me, so we all moved into a house together and went to meetings,” he said on Armchair Psychologist with Dax Shepard.
When he was cast in a guest role during the first season of Grey’s Anatomy, the response was so incredible he was cast as a regular for the third season.
For that famous guest role, Dane appeared in a small white towel only, having been in an adulterous relationship with Addison Montgomery, who was married to his best friend Dr Derek Shepard, known as “McDreamy’.
“It was wild,” he said on the podcast.
“But also, I had been sober for three or four years already. So I had my wits about me, and I knew what reality was and what reality wasn’t.
“I was able to differentiate between the two. I was able to conceptualise what that was, keep it in its place, enjoy it, dip in now and again, and come back.”
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Dane starred in Grey’s Anatomy as a series regular from 2006 until 2012.
He and Gayheart welcomed their daughter Billie in March 2010, and Georgia the following year in December 2011.
The wheels began to come off for Dane when his addiction resumed during the height of his fame.
“It was overwhelming, and I think I just wanted to pretend that it wasn’t and that I was comfortable with it,” he said on the podcast.
“Act like you’ve been there, but you haven’t been there.”
His character was killed off at the start of the ninth season of the show. He admits at the time he was “struggling”.
“They didn’t let me go because of that, although it definitely didn’t help,” he said on the podcast.
“I wasn’t the same guy they had hired. So I had understood when I was let go,” he said.
“Shonda [Rimes, Grey’s Anatomy showrunner] was great. She protected us fiercely. She protected us publicly. She protected us privately.”
Dane’s movie career continued throughout his time on Grey’s Anatomy, however his personal battles continued.
In April 2017, the movie The Last Ship halted production through Memorial Day to allow Dane to deal with the depression he was battling.
His next significant role would come a decade later in the cult TV hit Euphoria – which propelled the careers of Jacob Elordi, Sydney Sweeny and Zendaya – playing Cal Jacobs, the troubled father to Elordi’s character.
‘My only regret’
In February 2018, Gayheart filed for divorce from Dane after 14 years of marriage, citing “irreconcilable differences”.
“After 14 years together we have decided that ending our marriage is the best decision for our family,” Dane told PEOPLE at the time.
“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.”
Although their relationship would be on-again-off-again, with Gayheart later dismissing the claim.
The pair remain legally married but are not in a romantic relationship, although they remain close. Gayheart told E! News in 2025, “We are best of friends. We are really close.”
Dane spoke about the impact his addiction battle had on his marriage, telling PEOPLE in 2014, “My one regret is that I got the person I love most wrapped up in all that: Rebecca.”
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A new battle
In April 2025, Dane announced he had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which is known as motor neurone disease (MND) in Australia.
He said he’d started experiencing symptoms in early 2024 and by June 2025 he had completely lost function of his right arm/hand.
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“I started experiencing some weakness in my right hand,” Dane told Good Morning America.
“I didn’t really think anything of it at the time. I thought maybe I had been texting too much or my hand was fatigued.
“A few weeks later I noticed it had gotten a little worse, so I went and saw a hand specialist who sent me to another hand specialist. I went and saw a neurologist who sent me to another neurologist who said this is way above my pay grade.”
According to the Mayo Clinic, it is “a nervous system disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord”.
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The disease is a rare and incurable condition that progressively weakens muscles and affects physical function. The exact cause is not known and there is currently no cure.
“My left side is functioning, my right side has completely stopped working,” Dane said.
“I feel like maybe a couple, few more months, and I won’t have my left hand [functioning] either.”
While he can still walk now, he is worried about the functionality of his legs.
Dane is determined to continue working as long as he is able, including season three of Euphoria as well as TV shows Countdown and Kabul.
He also has two movies that in production – Into The Beautiful and Family Secrets.
“I’m going to ride this till the wheels fall off,” he told E! News.
“It keeps me sharp. It keeps me moving forward, which is super important right now.”
If you or someone you know is in need of support for addiction or mental ill health, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14, Men’s Helpline on 1300 78 99 78 or the National Alcohol and Other Drug hotline 1800 250 015.
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