Grey's Anatomy star Eric Dane was 'in control' of his death from ALS, his wife Rebecca Gayheart reveals

Rebecca Gayheart, 55, has revealed that the moment Eric Dane decided how he wanted to die came on his third day in hospital, when doctors' tone shifted and he knew the end had come. Dane, who died on 19 February aged 53, had been misdiagnosed with multifocal motor neuropathy — a treatable autoimmune condition — before eventually receiving his ALS diagnosis, a process that took nine months. Gayheart and daughters Billie, 16, and Georgia, 14, camped in his hospital room with battery-operated candles and played his favourite music.

Dane's posthumous memoir 'My Book of Days' reveals he called his ALS diagnosis 'a death sentence' after treatment for the wrong condition failed.

Gayheart dismissed their divorce in 2025 after separating in 2018, returning to support him through his illness.

'My life has become a horror movie,' Dane wrote in his memoir after learning doctors suspected ALS.