Eric Dane is opening up about his future in acting while living with ALS.
During a panel hosted by the I Am ALS organization on Tuesday night, the Euphoria star said that moving forward, he plans to focus his acting career on roles that involve ALS.
“I’m fairly limited in what I can do physically as an actor, but I still have my brain, and I still have my speech,” Dane said from the stage, which he shared with the I Am ALS founders and his colleagues from the series Brilliant Minds.
“I’m willing to do just about anything. I’ll take on any role, but I think from here on out, it’s going to have to be, you know, ALS-centric,” he said.
“It’s gonna be very difficult for me to play any other role where, you know … look at the 800-pound gorilla in the room. And I’m fine with that,” he continued. “I’m fine with that. I’m grateful that I can still work in any capacity.”
Dane also discussed his experience acting in Brilliant Minds, in which he plays a firefighter living with ALS.
“I’ve never played a character who’s going through something … I’m dealing with in real time, in real life as well,” he said. “It was hard, and there were moments where it was very difficult for me to even get the lines out, but I overall, I was really grateful for the experience. I found it to be a bit cathartic.”
Dane said his condition can be disheartening, saying that though he has “no reason to be in a good spirit at any time” he still manages to find joy.
“It’s encouraging for me to know that I actually can have, like, a buoyant spirit in the face of something so horrible,” he added.
Dane also said he felt it was important to speak out about his ALS journey.
“It’s imperative that I share my journey with as many people as I can, because I don’t feel like my life is about me anymore,” he said.
The former Grey’s Anatomy star announced in April that he had been diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
In an interview that aired in June on Good Morning America, Dane told ABC News’ Diane Sawyer he was “fighting as much as I can.”
“There’s so much about it that’s out of my control,” he added at the time.
Dane, a father of two daughters, went on to describe himself as “resilient” in both his fight against ALS and his fight to stay optimistic.
“I’m very hopeful … I don’t think this is the end of my story,” he said, speaking with Sawyer. “And whether it is or it isn’t, I’m gonna carry that idea with me.”
ALS, short for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, is a degenerative neurological disorder where the symptoms worsen over time, according to the National Institutes of Health.
The NIH states that ALS causes motor neurons — a type of nerve cell in the brain and spinal cord — to deteriorate, causing the muscles to weaken, and eventually leads to paralysis, taking away a person’s ability to move, speak or even breathe.
There is currently no known cure for ALS, but some treatments, and physical and speech therapies, may slow down the progression of the disorder and improve an ALS patient’s quality of life.
The NIH states that the average prognosis for ALS patients is two to five years of survival from the time of first symptoms, but there is a range: 10% of people with the condition live 10 years or more.
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