Eric Dane passed away on Thursday, February 19 after a short battle with ALS. He was only 53 and spent his final days surrounded by his wife, Rebecca Gayheart, and his two daughters, Billie, 15, and Georgia, 14. As ALS progresses, patients need round-the-clock care, and the cost of care is very expensive. Actors that rely on SAG-AFTRA insurance have to work a certain amount of hours in order to maintain it. Zachary Quinto reportedly specifically wrote a role for Eric as an ALS patient on Brilliant Minds, which allowed him to meet those requirements. That is truly one of the kindest Hollywood stories I’ve ever heard.
Even with insurance and resources, Eric’s illness took a big toll on his finances. According to Rebecca, they had to appeal to their insurance company twice before they got approval for an at-home nurse. When shifts weren’t covered, Rebecca stepped in and looked after Eric herself. After his passing, Eric’s friend Mike McGuiness set up a GoFundMe for his daughters. Over the weekend, Rebecca shared the link to it on her Instagram. Here’s what it says:
It is with profound sadness that we share the loss of Eric Dane after a hard-fought battle with ALS, leaving behind his devoted wife, Rebecca, and his two teenage daughters, Billie and Georgia, who were the center of his world.
Following his diagnosis, Eric became a passionate spokesperson for the ALS community, using his voice and platform to advocate for fellow patients and to push for greater awareness. Even as his own health declined, he remained deeply committed to helping others facing the same devastating disease. As his illness progressed far more quickly than anyone could have imagined, Eric’s friends have come together to create this GoFundMe to support his girls and their future needs.
Any contribution, no matter the size, will help provide stability during this incredibly difficult time and in the future for Eric’s wonderful daughters.
As of Monday morning, the GoFundMe for Billie and Georgia had raised over $337,000 with more than 3,400 contributors. After all of the drama surrounding the GoFundMe that was set up for James Van Der Beek’s family, I think there is a bit of public weariness about contributing to another one at the moment. The GoFundMe was initially under review, but has since been verified. Celebrity supporters include Euphoria creator Sam Levinson, Hailey Beiber, and Brad Falchuk.
Speaking of Falchuk, Eric spoke with him for Netflix’s Famous Last Words series, which features an interview with a public figure that will only be released after their death. You may have seen the very poignant episode they did with Jane Goodall, whose final words urging that we not lose hope in a better future still make me cry. Eric’s interview concluded with a very moving message that he recorded for his daughters. As a parent, it’s a tough watch, but he does a beautiful job of sharing his last words. I’ll share it below, but if you can’t watch it, CB posted the transcript of his message here. I truly recommend at least reading it.
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- Los Angeles, CA – Eric Dane, known for his roles in Grey’s Anatomy and Euphoria, has announced his diagnosis with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). Despite the challenges ahead, Dane remains committed to his work and is set to return to the set of Euphoria next week. “I am grateful to have my loving family by my side as we navigate this next chapter,” Dane shared, expressing appreciation for the support of his wife, Rebecca Gayheart, and their two daughters. ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, leading to muscle control loss, paralysis, and ultimately, death. There is currently no known cure. Dane has requested privacy for his family during this time. Pictured: Rebecca Gayheart-Dane, Eric Dane BACKGRID USA 10 APRIL 2025 BYLINE MUST READ: MediaPunch / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- Los Angeles, CA – Eric Dane, known for his roles in Grey’s Anatomy and Euphoria, has announced his diagnosis with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). Despite the challenges ahead, Dane remains committed to his work and is set to return to the set of Euphoria next week. “I am grateful to have my loving family by my side as we navigate this next chapter,” Dane shared, expressing appreciation for the support of his wife, Rebecca Gayheart, and their two daughters. ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, leading to muscle control loss, paralysis, and ultimately, death. There is currently no known cure. Dane has requested privacy for his family during this time. Pictured: Eric Dane BACKGRID USA 10 APRIL 2025 BYLINE MUST READ: MediaPunch / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- Los Angeles premiere of Amazon Prime Video’s ‘Countdown’ at Harmony Gold Featuring: Eric Dane Where: Los Angeles, California, United States When: 18 Jun 2025 Credit: Ryan Hartford/INSTARimages.com
I watched his video and it made me ugly cry. As a mom, I would hope to leave a message for my kids that was as articulate and poignant as his was.
Obviously, these Go Fund Me campaigns are created out of real need, and deserve compassion.
Far away and aside from judging these two famous people circumstances, I can say yes to Rosie’s speculation about growing public dyspepsia around Go Fund Me campaigns which is a not even glorified form of public begging.
There’s a lot of unpack and it’s not nice–it involves judgment about people’s private choices about their finances that are now being placed at the public’s feet. Choices such as a downpayment on 36-acre property for a cash-strapped unemployed mother of six who will not be able to make mortgage payments.
The place where I’ve settled is being horrified how our country falls woefully short on healthcare, to the point of cruelty, bankruptcy, and preventable death. Scandinavians must be so confused (Canadians: close by and aware of how much we suck). We are– Were– a wealthy country.
Personally I think that these actors might be really wealthy, but not crazy rich, and medical treatments are really expensive and can have an impact on their finances.
Your compassion is kind.
I’m not sure how you know that the GFM campaigns are created out of real need. For example, it isn’t clear that Van Der Beek’s wife is cash-strapped. Nor Rebecca Gayheart. That’s what people are objecting to, and I do believe it is valid. It is valid to ask why they need to fundraise when they have millions of dollars to buy ranches.
The country does fall woefully short on healthcare, but still it doesn’t cost $3 million to treat ALS. That is what Van Der Beek’s wife has so far from donations, and the GFM still isn’t closed. Speaking of preventable deaths, she has actively, vocally campaigned **against** vaccines. She has propagated covid conspiracy theories.
I agree with this take – “need” is not a word I would necessarily use for every campaign. This is a matter of wanting to maintain a lifestyle. So, so many families lose a house, not just struggle to maintain their second house. I struggle with people rushing to support families who clearly have more money than the average person – why do we seem to think that these families need more, are entitled to more than others? It’s odd to see this deep sympathy for some of the most fortunate but turn a blind eye to those who truly have been wiped out.
Sell the real estate and tell me whether they’re still cash strapped after. The average family cannot afford even a basic home at this point with them averaging 400-500K. Expecting donations to maintain multiple multi-million dollar properties is ludicrous.
Rebecca Gayheart has been dating Peter Morton, a very wealthy restaurant owner. That being said, no idea how serious it is.
Wow, a lot of anger directed at people just surviving a traumatic loss. Maybe just don’t donate and move on?
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@ Jenny — Nothing I said was angry. If someone is soliciting donations from the public, the public does have a right to ask why donations are needed. Of course the families will grieve. The question is — why do they need this money? Neither loss was unexpected. In other words, this doesn’t seem to be about “trying to survive.”
@Josephine, that’s a great point and I hadn’t thought about it exactly that way: that there’s a difference between genuine “need” and “maintaining the lifestyle one has become accustomed to.” (I tried to make this same sort of point about Sarah Ferguson in another post, but was not nearly as articulate as you were!)
I’m wrestling with these two and personally (this my opinion) I see a difference between these two families – and yes I’m being judgy.
JVB – 6 kids, two houses, and a wife who doesn’t seem to be getting a job any time soon. Also his anti-vax, homeopathic voodoo meant a late diagnosis for the cancer, and (looking at you Steve Jobs) delayed chemo. I have sympathy but this seems risky all around to have a family reliant on one artistic salary.
Eric Dane – knocked sideways by a disease which requires 24-hr care, wheelchairs, retro fitting of houses/cars, etc. He kept acting as long as physically possible (and was going to show at Emmys). Rebecca probably had to forego jobs in past 2 yrs but will return to her career. I feel like his friends want to donate to the girls’ college funds and help the family break even again.
Agree with this. And surely the VDBs don’t *need* 36 acres in Texas on top of a home in hollywood? Eric Dane apparently didn’t own a home (wasn’t he living in one of johnny depp’s properties) and I’m sure most of his personal funds went towards his enormous medical costs. His kids still have their mom’s home and income but everything their father would have contributed to their future is gone.
Good points.
More should be done to improve the healthcare system in the US. A loved one being sick shouldn’t lead to bankruptcy.
I know that our shitty healthcare system can devastate even people we think of as wealthy, though they may feel impoverished relative to their richer friends. However, I really need rich people to read the room here. If there is a need, Eric and James’ friends who wanted to help should have privately circulated a request among their wealthy friends and acquaintances. This should have been an email or a text, not a public appeal. It looks incredibly tone deaf and like a tacky money grab.
there has to be a way for celebrities to just share something with people they know, other high earners. it’s just tasteless.
Most actors are not rich. Why should this myth be perpetuated? Even if he was well off, it’s clear that his earnings was eaten up by his medical bills.
I remember being shocked a few years ago when we learned that Melissa Gilbert owed almost $400K in back taxes, and had to sell off some of her beloved Little House on the Prairie costumes/props/etc. that she’d kept after the show ended. She admitted she was having financial difficulties and that she had a payment plan with the IRS.
I know that only a small number of actors are able to make a living acting; something like 98% of SAG members need second jobs to survive. But I thought someone who was the star of a show that was SO popular (I read that at any given moment, LHOTP is airing *somewhere* in the world, 24/7), that ran for so many seasons, and has been in syndication for decades would provide her with more substantial residuals to rely on than most actors.
Maybe it was a case of financial mismanagement on her end, who knows— but she was never someone I imagined would ever have financial problems. I don’t know how much either Rebecca or Eric has worked; I primarily remember her as “The Noxema Girl” from ads in YM and Seventeen magazines back in the day (I’m really aging myself by admitting that 😂), and I only saw him on Grey’s Anatomy, but stopped watching it years ago and don’t know how many seasons he was on. They really might not have had that much money to begin with, and the cost of cancer treatments are brutal.
(I also thought about the fact that there was probably a civil wrongful death lawsuit brought against Rebecca by the parents of the little boy she killed years ago after swerving around *both* a stopped school bus as well as the car stopped behind it (!). Obviously I don’t know anything for sure, but I’d be surprised if they didn’t, because she was so clearly at fault, and she might have had to pay them an amount high enough to have wiped them out at the time. This is obviously just total speculation on my part, but it popped into my brain today for some reason.)
I saw the Brilliant Minds episode!
It was cool from Zachary to do that, at the same time it’s awful that we live in a world where someone so ill has to work to meet the requirements for the health coverage 🙁
More should be done about healthcare in America and I bet that due to the JVdB situation you are going to see more people not contributing to celebrities GFM’s.
My parents would be considered “well-off”, though nowhere near the kind of wealth (in the multi-millions of dollars) these actors have accumulated; they had excellent insurance through my Dad’s job and no debt beyond a mortgage. I’m not familiar with the costs of ALS treatment, but I do know that my Dad’s treatments for metastatic colorectal cancer were astronomical. Between shots, pills, chemo, surgeries, PT, and so on, it cost a small fortune. He passed away on the day he was set to retire early from the career he’d been in for 40 years, at 60-years-old. My Mom also worked for many years but she had taken early retirement to help take care of my Dad when we didn’t know he was terminally ill. He had more time on this earth than James Van der Beek or Eric Dane and he had steady insurance through his job, but the costs of what isn’t covered can be crushing. I don’t know what to make of their actual personal finances or GoFundMes, but I know that even as a household with better-than-average income, it was a strain. Keeping someone alive should not be something that families need to decide as something they can afford, or not.
Your last sentence. This exactly.
@Lauren, your last sentence sums it up perfectly, and I’m so sorry for what your family had to go through.
On Gray’s Eric Dane reportedly got between $125,000 and $250,000 per episode for 139 eps. Not sure how that adds up to a Go Fund Me.
I know it sounds like a lot of money. But after taxes, manager or agent cut, lawyers. It’s really not as much as you think it is net income for them. He was a working actor for most of his career.
He also was off Grey’s since 2021. Looking at his IMDB he didn’t have hug paycheck gigs since then.
I personally think that sort of money would be better off donating directly to research.
But if people want to do this. It’s their money to spend how they want.
I could see what he earned going towards medical bills and personal care from nurses if his insurance failed him.
His agents probably also got a cut of his income, and I’m not sure how flying for promos works unless your lawyers work it into the contracts.
Health care costs for terminal illnesses sound astronomical.
People don’t understand that just because you see someone a lot as an actor, that doesn’t mean they’re rich. Many actors are just that WORKING actors. Gabrielle Union was saying that she was having a struggle paying for her Dad’s memory care and everything else for her side of the family. She doesn’t like to use her husband’s money for her people, so she pays. She’s never been a movie star, she had Being Mary Jane a while ago. She isn’t rolling in money. Once you get paid, it’s taxes, and whoever else you have to pay. Then you have to stack that money to pay your bills until you have your next job lined up. It’s the memory care that’s getting her. It’s a shame that in this country people have to go bankrupt or die and we can’t get decent or humane treatment for memory/brain health. It’s a shame that our current administration is gutting research dollars that are desperately needed.
I can’t speak to the personal finances of these two families however I do think that people have a skewed idea of how much money actors on their levels actually have. First of all, neither has starred in a project for a long time. I don’t mean hadn’t worked, but there is a huge difference in pay between being considered a starring role vs. a supporting role. They no longer get paid big residuals for old episodes because of streaming and even if they made a lot at one time about 50% goes to other people (taxes, lawyers, agents, managers). Rebecca was never a super successful actor and she had to pay a lot to the family of the kid she hit and killed with her car back in the 2000s. All that is not to say they should be doing these go fund me things but I just think it’s important to note that not every working actor is a multimillionaire. Most are not.
@D, I should have read all of the comments before typing my own because you said a lot of what I wanted to, but you did it much better! I agree that many people assume that anyone whose name we know because they’ve been on tv have a tendency to overestimate how wealthy they are.
(It always annoyed me when the British press would try to degrade Meghan Markle for being “only a D-list actress!” or whatever because she was successful enough to make a living acting, and very few people can do that. So ignorant.)