Eric Dane was compelled to overlook an look on the ALS Community’s Champions for Cures and Care Gala on Saturday, January 24, resulting from ongoing challenges associated to his ALS analysis.
“The ALS Community has been knowledgeable that Eric Dane had hoped to hitch us this night to simply accept his Advocate of the Yr Award, however as a result of bodily realities of ALS, he isn’t nicely sufficient to attend,” a spokesperson for the ALS Community advised The Hollywood Reporter on Saturday.
The group’s assertion continued, “We stay deeply grateful for his braveness, advocacy, and continued dedication to the ALS group, and we honor him totally this night with our profound respect and help. Aaron Lazar, Broadway star and Grammy Award nominee, will settle for the award on his behalf.”
The charitable group introduced in September 2025 that Dane, 53, would obtain the Advocate of the Yr Award at its annual Pasadena, California, ceremony. The ALS Community credited Dane with bringing “worldwide consideration to ALS” via his “management and compassion” ever since he was recognized with the neurodegenerative illness.
“This award is greater than an honor,” Dane mentioned on the time. “[The award is] a mirrored image of the unimaginable energy and braveness I see within the ALS group day-after-day.”
Dane went public together with his ALS analysis in April 2025. (ALS — additionally generally generally known as Lou Gehrig’s illness or motor neuron illness — is a “nervous system illness that impacts nerve cells within the mind and spinal twine” and causes lack of muscle management over time, in response to the Mayo Clinic.)
“I’ve been recognized with ALS,” he advised Folks on the time. “I’m grateful to have my loving household by my aspect as we navigate this subsequent chapter.”
He continued, “I really feel lucky that I’m able to proceed working and am wanting ahead to returning to [the] set of Euphoria subsequent week. I kindly ask that you simply give my household and I privateness throughout this time.”
Eric Dane in June 2019. CHRIS DELMAS/AFP through Getty Photographs
Along with capturing Euphoria season 3, Dane visitor starred on Sensible Minds in November 2025 to play a firefighter and 9/11 hero struggling to share his ALS analysis together with his household. He promoted the TV function by opening up on a Giving Tuesday panel with I AM ALS in regards to the affect of his analysis on his working life.
“I’m not about to concede my function to some illness. I simply am not able to doing that,” he defined, earlier than later including: “I’ve no motive to be in spirit at any time, on any given day. I don’t assume anyone would blame me if I went upstairs in my bed room, crawled beneath the sheets, and spent the subsequent two weeks crying. And I used to be a bit of bit pleasantly stunned once I realized that I wasn’t constructed like that, as a result of I assumed for positive that was gonna be me.”
He added, “I feel it’s crucial that I share my journey with as many individuals as I can as a result of I don’t really feel like my life is about me anymore.”
Throughout that very same panel, Dane pressured that his household’s help had been essential as he grappled with uncertainties in his future.
“Clearly, I’ve a household at house they usually’re the primary precedence, however that is such a giant deal to me to guarantee that persons are conscious of what ALS is and what it’s about and, extra importantly, what we will do to fight it and enhance the panorama,” he mentioned.
Eric Dane’s spouse, Rebecca Gayheart, says the couple’s two daughters are “taking it day-to-day” amid his ALS battle. “We’ve got some skilled therapists who’re serving to us, and we’re simply attempting to have some hope and do it with dignity, grace and love,” Gayheart, 54, advised Folks in an interview printed on Saturday, […]
Dane and his estranged spouse, Rebecca Gayheart, share two daughters: Billie, 15, and Georgia, 13. (Gayheart filed for divorce from Dane in February 2018 however withdrew the authorized petition in March 2025. Dane made his crimson carpet debut with girlfriend Janell Shirtcliff on the Los Angeles premiere of his present Countdown in June, whereas Gayheart has been linked to billionaire Peter Morton.)
Dane has been candid in regards to the development of ALS. He confirmed on Good Morning America in June 2025 that he solely had “one functioning arm” as a result of his left aspect “utterly stopped working” and was later photographed utilizing a wheelchair that October.
