5 Best Eric Dane Movies And TV Shows You Need To Watch

Film and television actor Eric Dane passed away at the age of 53 on February 19, 2026, just 10 months after publicly revealing that he was diagnosed with ALS, a degenerative and fatal disease also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. In a statement provided to People Magazine, Dane's family wrote, "With heavy hearts, we share that Eric Dane passed on Thursday afternoon following a courageous battle with ALS. He spent his final days surrounded by dear friends, his devoted wife, and his two beautiful daughters, Billie and Georgia, who were the center of his world."

If you really feel like crying, you can watch Dane — who, while he filmed this video, was losing his ability to speak due to ALS — deliver a final speech for Netflix's "Famous Last Words" series in a clip that's going viral on the social media site X. As far as Dane's on-screen acting work goes, though, you also have plenty to choose from. Aside from ensemble films like "Burlesque" and the oft-maligned "X-Men: The Last Stand," Dane spent most of his time on the small screen — so if you want to honor the late actor, go ahead and watch any or all of these five projects.

No, don't go! Hear me out! Garry Marshall's 2010 ensemble rom-com is overstuffed and, frankly, not particularly good — but Eric Dane is actually really good in it, partly because he's given one of the better storylines of the entire ordeal. (Yes, this is also the movie where Taylor Swift makes her feature film acting debut; there's a lot going on here.) In the film, Dane plays Sean Jackson, a popular and successful professional football player who's trying to decide whether or not he should retire ... and whether or not he should come out as openly gay in the process. Alongside his publicist Kara (Jessica Biel), he weighs what he should do. While this is going on, we keep seeing scenes with Bradley Cooper's airline passenger Holden Wilson, who gives up his car to allow Army captain Kate Hazeltine (Julia Roberts) to get home for the holiday once they land.

Holden, as it turns out, is Sean's secret boyfriend — and in a scene that's way more touching than it has any right to be, Sean comes out on television and gets to see the love of his life later that night. Yes, "Valentine's Day" is a patently silly movie, but Dane is really good in it, and he gets the sweetest character arc out of anybody.

Sam Levinson's eternally controversial HBO series "Euphoria" premiered in 2019, longtime fans of a certain medical TV drama might have been a little surprised to see Eric Dane playing very much against type as Cal Jacobs. A tightly wound and controlling man whose son Nate, played by Jacob Elordi, is saddled with his dad's generational trauma, Cal has a shocking secret: he secretly goes online and finds young trans people for random sexual encounters. One of those young people, as it happens, is Jules Vaughn, who begins the series as a new student and immediately bonds with series lead Rue Bennett (Zendaya). 

Partway through season 1 of "Euphoria," Jules correctly clocks that Cal was one of her partners and calls him out on it. Thanks to the fact that Dane was an astounding actor capable of plenty of nuance, he takes a character that could easily be one-dimensional and makes him weirdly tragic as he begs for Jules to keep his secret. Then, in season 2, we get an episode that kicks off with a Cal-centric flashback — "Ruminations: Big and Little Bullys" — where we learn that he was once in love with his male best friend. In the following episode "You Who Cannot See, Think of Those Who Can," Dane gets an absolutely wild scene where Cal gets home drunk and blows up at his family. "Euphoria" is, to put it lightly, a mess of a show that's anchored by great performances. One of those came from Dane.

Eric Dane left "Grey's Anatomy" (we'll circle back to that, obviously) in 2012 after the very beginning of the show's ninth season, and after playing the same character for six years, he was apparently trying to find a change of pace. He found it with "The Last Ship," a TNT drama that ran from 2014 to 2018 and spanned 5 seasons. The strangely ambitious series focuses on a world ravaged by a global pandemic (whoops) that only has 20% of its population left. Enter Dane's Commander Tom Chandler (eventually named a captain and then an admiral throughout the show's run), who is in charge of a missile destroyer named the USS Nathan James and must try and find a cure as the pandemic rages on.

Alongside fellow cast members like Travis Van Winkle, Rhona Mitra, Bridget Regan, and Jodie Turner-Smith, Dane turned in a fine performance on this heightened but extremely fun show, and it gave him a chance to stretch his wings as a performer. In 2014 he told TVLine, "[Chandler is] honorable. He's consistent. He's a bit of a maverick at times. He's sincere. Coming from 'Grey's Anatomy,' those are things I hadn't gotten to play for a little bit. Mark Sloan was just the opposite of all that stuff." (That's not entirely fair to Mark Sloan, but again, we'll circle back to that.)

One of Eric Dane's final projects, "Countdown," an original series released by Amazon Prime Video in 2025, features the actor as yet another law enforcement official. This time, he's playing FBI Special Agent Nathan Blythe, who runs an elite task force based in Los Angeles. The series kicks off with the death of a Department of Homeland Security officer, at which point the show's protagonist, detective Mark Meachum ("Supernatural" veteran Jensen Ackles), is brought into the task force by Nathan and alongside other agents like DEA veteran Special Agent Amber Oliveras (Jessica Camacho), FBI cyber crime expert Special Agent Evan Shepherd (Violett Beane), counter-terrorism expert FBI Special Agent Keyonte Bell (Elliot Knight), and LAPD detective Luke Finau (Uli Latukefu), who spent years in the department's narcotics division.

"Countdown" was canceled after one season, but it's still a fun project that lets Dane show off his considerable range. Still, when you think of Eric Dane, one show probably comes to mind ... and that's "Grey's Anatomy."

When Eric Dane first shows up as Dr. Mark Sloan, the go-to plastic surgeon of the East Coast, he hits on the titular Dr. Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) before getting promptly clocked by his former best friend and Meredith's recent ex, neurosurgeon Dr. Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey). Mark, who literally makes multiple entrances into scenes wearing nothing but a towel with a cloud of steam behind him as he emerges from a hot bathroom — a phenomenon that partially inspired his in-show nickname "McSteamy" — is introduced as a handsome foil for Derek, particularly when we learn that Mark had an affair with Derek's ex-wife Dr. Addison Montgomery (Kate Walsh) that ended their long marriage.

Wisely, "Grey's Anatomy" kept Dane around and let Mark evolve. Throughout the show, he shares a genuinely beautiful friendship with orthopedic surgeon Dr. Callie Torres (Sara Ramírez) — a friendship that includes semi-regular sex, which is how they end up co-parenting baby Sofia Robbins Sloan-Torres alongside Callie's girlfriend Dr. Arizona Robbins (Jessica Capshaw) and a swoony, somewhat legendary romance with Meredith's half-sister Dr. Lexie Grey (Chyler Leigh). Mark is wry, funny, surprisingly emotional, and ends up becoming one of the show's very best characters, particularly as he gives up his womanizing ways to be a better partner to Lexie.

In the two-part season 8 finale of "Grey's Anatomy," a bunch of the doctors are involved in a plan crash (a lot of physicians die in increasingly stupid ways on this show) and Lexie dies of her injuries in the wild before Mark succumbs to his back in Seattle. The hospital featured ends up being named Grey-Sloan Memorial after them, though — and there's no question that Mark and Dane changed "Grey's Anatomy" for the better.