Eric Dane’s Gift Was Letting People See Below the Very Handsome Surface

When Eric Dane makes his first appearance on Grey’s Anatomy, the deck is stacked against him.

Yes, within five minutes of him showing up on screen, his character, Dr. Mark Sloan, already been dubbed “McSteamy” by Meredith (Ellen Pompeo), Cristina (Sandra Oh) and Izzie (Katherine Heigl). But he’s also taken a punch Derek (Patrick Dempsey) over Mark’s off-screen affair with Derek’s ex, Addison (Kate Walsh). Chief of surgery Richard Webber (James Pickens Jr.) at first blows up at Derek over the incident, but when he hears why Derek punched Mark, he asks, “Did you put your weight behind it?”

You’re supposed to notice Mark Sloan. You’re supposed to want him, maybe. But you’re not supposed to like him. And when Mark reappears early the next season, barely clad in a towel — just after Derek and Addison have a heartfelt talk in a hotel room about the end of their marriage — you’re really not supposed to like him.

But six years later, Mark’s death is one of the more touching scenes in a series full of them. Dane and the Grey’s writers gradually transformed Mark from a hot, swaggering jerk into a guy loved enough to have the hospital renamed after him (and his equally doomed love, Lexie Grey, played by Chyler Leigh) when the character died.

Dane, who died Thursday of complications from ALS at age 53, was never nominated for an Emmy or individual SAG Award for his roles, though he shared in an ensemble SAG win for the Grey’s cast in 2007. But he played two indelible characters — Mark Sloan and Euphoria’s Cal Jacobs — over the course of a career that, in a fairer world, would have carried on for much longer. The connection he forged with audiences is one unique to TV, and he did it by continually showing there was more to him and his characters than just a (very) handsome face.

Sloan never really lost the swagger of his early appearances on Grey’s Anatomy — he was a top plastic surgeon and rarely missed a chance to remind people of that, and he slept around a lot (to be fair, a lot the show’s other doctors did too). But over the course of his time on the show, Mark also revealed himself to be a steadfast friend and doting father. Dane got to play much a more vulnerable Mark through his relationship with Lexie, and it didn’t feel cheap or forced.

Dane’s starring role in TNT’s post-apocalyptic drama The Last Ship was a straightforward leading-man performance, but the nature of the show meant it wasn’t given to tons of emotional nuance. Soon after that show ended, though, Dane was cast in Euphoria, which will go down as one of the last great roles of his career.

The provocative HBO series from Sam Levinson focuses on its teen and young adult characters — several of whom, including Zendaya, Jacob Elordi and Sydney Sweeney, have seen their careers ascend to new heights after the first two seasons. But it’s hard to take your eyes off of Dane’s Cal when he’s on screen. Playing Nate’s (Elordi) closeted and self-loathing bisexual father went against type for Dane, but he once again showed the range that had endeared him to Grey’s Anatomy viewers a decade earlier, particularly with a season two episode that revealed more of Cal’s history.

Dane will appear in the show’s long-delayed third season, part of which he filmed after going public with his ALS diagnosis. Whether Euphoria incorporates Dane’s real-life condition in the coming season will be revealed as the season unfolds; it’s set to premiere April 8.

Dane also played an ALS patient in an episode of NBC’s medical drama Brilliant Minds earlier this season, ending the episode with a voiceover as his character records his speech into a voice-making app some patients use when they lose the ability to speak. “We were shooting that scene … [and] Eric’s performance was so raw and so vulnerable and so moving [that] the crew stood up and clapped him out that day for about 10 minutes,” showrunner Michael Grassi told The Hollywood Reporter in November. “It was so beautiful.”