Eric Dane opened up about living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) before his death on Thursday, February 19.
In his last public appearance, the Euphoria star called living with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, “so horrible.”
Dane’s final appearance was at a virtual panel featuring I AM ALS and Synapticure co-founders Brian Wallach and Sandra Abrevaya for Giving Tuesday in December 2025.
He reflected on his first role as an ALS patient, Matthew, a firefighter and 9/11 hero who finds it difficult to inform his wife about his diagnosis with a progressive, fatal neurodegenerative disease in Brilliant Minds.
The Burlesque alum confessed that separating himself away from the character of Matthew turned out to be a tough part, as he was playing something “so real.” However, he was “grateful” for the “cathartic” experience.
Dane said, “I have no reason to be in a good spirit at any time, on any given day, I don’t think anybody would blame me if I went upstairs in my bedroom, crawled under the sheets, and spent the next two weeks crying. And I was a little bit pleasantly surprised when I realized that I wasn’t built like that, because I thought for sure that was gonna be me.”
Having a “buoyant spirit in the face of something so horrible” was “very encouraging,” and he made sure that “people are aware of what ALS is and what it’s about.
More importantly, “what we can do to combat it and improve the landscape, because it’s so rocky and littered with hurdles and bureaucracy and all this other nonsense that we’re trying to sift through so we can get to a place where we go, start working on solution,” he stated.
It is pertinent to mention that Dane passed away after revealing his ALS diagnosis in April 2025.
