Inside Johnny Depp’s ‘Beautiful’ Gesture Towards Longtime Pal Eric Dane Before Actor’s Tragic Death

Eric Dane had an angel in pal Johnny Depp in the months leading up to the Grey’s Anatomy star’s tragic death: Johnny let Eric live rent-free in one of Johnny’s LA homes. “They’ve been friends for years, and Johnny didn’t want Eric to have to worry about any financial problems,” says a source. “It was a beautiful thing to do.”

Eric passed away on Feb. 19 at age 53, 10 months after he publicly shared he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The disease reduced Eric to a shadow of his former self — but sources say the actor never gave up, vowing, “I’m gonna fight until the last breath on this one.”

The Euphoria dad was a real-life father to Billie, 15, and Georgia, 14, whose mother is actress Rebecca Gayheart. The doting parents, who wed in 2004, separated in September 2017, and the following year the Jawbreaker beauty filed for divorce.

However, Rebecca, 54, withdrew her petition in March 2025 — one month before Dane publicly revealed his diagnosis of ALS, a progressive, neurodegenerative disease known to ravage motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord and cause muscle weakness, atrophy and eventually paralysis and death.

In an appearance on the Broad Ideas with Rachel Bilson and Olivia Allen podcast, Rebecca said when she scuttled her divorce filing, she was trying to teach their kids to be there for family — even “when times are at their worst,” People reported.

She shared, “We tell them, ‘We show up for people no matter what. He is our family. He is your father.’”

In December, Dane appeared on a virtual panel for the charity I AM ALS to say that he found, through the ordeal, that he had more strength than he ever imagined.

“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,” he said. “[But] I realized that I wasn’t built like that.”