A bar sits alone in the middle of nowhere. Monsters that look akin to Alien with oblong heads and prodding sharp jowls converge around it. They thirst to kill everyone inside. A strapping young man in a battered t-shirt, blood running down the contours of his cheekbones and nostrils, has just slayed one of the haunting creatures. He finds solace in the bar amongst other survivors. He turns to the other civilians hiding within the building, briefing them on the lurking danger. Another bar dweller asks the lad who he is, and just as our hero confidently declares, “I’m the guy that’s gonna save your ass,” a claw crashes through the window and rips his head off.

Actor Eric Dane is probably most known for his roles as in Dr. Mark Sloan, aka McSteamy in Grey’s Anatomy, or Cal Jacobs in HBO’s Euphoria, but playing that decapitated trope of a brave man in 2005’s horror-comedy Feast, executive produced by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, was the role that made the actor feel like he finally had found his spot in the world of entertainment. “When I did this scene,” he recalls, “I felt like, ‘Okay, now I’m acting. This is acting. This is what it is. And this is amazing. This feels great.’ I was completely unconscious and in the moment. Present. And that actually was a huge turning point for me.”

Dane smiles, basking in the nostalgia of the obscure small-budget film. “It wasn’t Shakespeare, okay,” he laughs. “But that wasn’t the point. The point was, in that moment, on that day, I felt like I had given myself over to this craft and allowed my instrument to hit the notes that needed to be hit to make that scene work and move the story forward. And I was like, ‘Oh, wow, like, fuck. Eureka!’ You know? It was cool. That was a huge turning point for me.”

Dane had moved to Los Angeles more than a decade before that aha! moment. It was about to be the mid-90s. Radio stations bounced between Coolio’s latest hit, “Gangsta’s Paradise,” and Alanis Morissette’s third studio album, Jagged Little Pill. The original PlayStation had stolen teenagers’ attention. Plaid pants and grungy flannels were stocked in the mall. And wreaking a measure havoc on Los Angeles, the up-and-coming actor was finding footing in a new city.

“I was running around with a rowdy group of friends,” Dane shares, fondly recalling his first few years in the City of Angels. “We were terrorizing the city, having been released on an unsuspecting public. We got into a lot of trouble. But mostly, we just endeavored to have fun.”

The now 51-year-old San Francisco-born actor had some success in the early-mid 90s, securing one-episode roles in shows like Married... with Children and Roseanne. More significant, recurring parts in Charmed and Gideon’s Crossing helped plant him further in the industry. But it’d take years for him to hunker down to focus on acting. Dane says, “I couldn’t get my head together for long enough to find any sort of lasting employment or really figure out that I wanted to exercise the craft, study the craft, and go deeper with the craft of acting. I was strictly about having fun.”

Like many aspiring actors, Dane navigated periods of struggle and experimentation. He remembers hearing stories about actors randomly meeting a director or casting agent at a party and their lives changing overnight. When he realized that wasn’t practical, he used his passion for acting to ignite a transformation in his approach. “I decided that I loved acting, and I would do anything I had to do to figure out how to get better. I would take any suggestion anybody had who knew better than I on what my next step should be. And I just kind of incrementally got my foot in the door, you know, I didn’t kick down the door. It opened very slowly for me. I struggled for a long time.”

Even when times seemed rough and the future unclear, he didn’t allow his mind to entertain the prospect of failure. There was no Plan B. He wasn’t ready to become an accountant or clerk. By the time he was 27, he was fully supporting himself by acting. “I didn’t want to allow for room to pull the ripcord on something. I was either going to crash and burn into the ground, or the chute was going to open at some point, and it was going to be a real nice soft landing into some green pasture.”

In another form of less unruly fun than running amuck in a metropolis, Dane remembers watching the first Bad Boys movie, starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, in 1995. “That movie was radical. I loved it,” he says. Nearly 30 years later, his effort and commitment to success have sparked a full circle moment. That rambunctious young actor who was sitting in the theater with a bucket of popcorn, eyes fixed on the action unfolding on the big screen, now a seasoned performer, shares the screen with veteran entertainers Lawrence and Smith in the fourth movie of the buddy cop comedy action franchise, Bad Boys: Ride or Die, out this summer.

Dane plays the film’s antagonist, James McGrath, a former US Army Ranger who turned criminal after being captured and tortured by the cartel. He is the bad boy.

Over the past several years, Dane has often been cast as someone rough around the edges, many of which are current or ex-military men. Soon, he will start filming a new television series, Countdown, where he plays a special agent in charge of investigating a murder that happens in broad daylight. These macho, dutiful men he has recently portrayed are a switch-up from his iconic role as Mark Sloan in Grey’s Anatomy, a charismatic and skilled plastic surgeon with charm and confidence. It’s also a long stride from his actual personality. “I don’t see myself as a commander or authoritarian or leader of people,” he says.

Dane credits his ability to transform into gritty antagonists partially to his role as Captain Tom Chandler, the commanding officer of a naval destroyer navigating a post-apocalyptic world affected by a global pandemic in the drama television series The Last Ship (2014-2018). But what has fostered his ability to tap into the dark, twisted minds of nefarious men is his aforementioned role as Cal Jacobs in Euphoria, the immensely popular drama series that explores the turbulent lives of high school students navigating love, identity, addiction, and plenty of trauma.

Cal Jacobs, the father of main character Nate Jacobs (Jacob Elordi), is a wealthy, football-loving father on the outside. But he lives a double life of sorts. He meets up with queer men and trans women via dating apps and secretly films their interactions, saving the tapes. “I think it’s opened up a lot of opportunities for me to play characters that tend to lean on the darker side of the spectrum,” Dane says. Some could consider many of Dane’s roles of the past several years villainous. And many would lump Cal Jacobs into that category. But to play someone with as much depth and complexity as Jacobs, Dane couldn’t view him as a blanket villain. “I personally never saw Cal Jacobs as a bad guy,” he considers. “ You can’t play a character if you’re going to pass judgment on them. It’s just impossible to do.”

Though he is much different than his on-screen character, Dane does feel a special connection to Jacobs. “I don’t judge Cal Jacobs. I feel for that guy. I know what it’s like to live a double life. I don’t know what it’s like to have that experience be my life experience. But I do know what it’s like to not have my insides match with my outsides. So I felt like there was a way in there for me with that character.”

Season three of the hit-tv show seems to be up in the air. Obstacles have pushed back filming several times, but if and when the series comes back, Dane is ready to return. “I love playing him. I can’t wait to get that guy back on his feet again.”

Dane doesn’t typically watch the projects he is in. He has famously discussed not watching Grey’s Anatomy despite the show’s wild success. He watched Bad Boys: Ride or Die twice at premieres, but started noticing the way his mouth moved or why he said a line a certain way the second time around. Like many actors, it’s hard not to be a perfectionist. “The experience is in the actual act of the experience. Acting is acting. Acting is not watching. It’s the act,” he says. But Euphoria is unique to Dane. He can’t help but participate in the zeitgeist and watch. “Visually, it’s such a compelling, beautiful show to watch.”

When people recognize the actor out in public, he can always tell whether they recognize him from Grey’s or Euphoria. “Backpack and sparkly eyeshadow? Euphoria,” he laughs. One particularly memorable encounter had a fan asking him to sign a DVD copy of Feast, that cult horror-comedy that beheaded his character and set the stage for his future. With three decades of diverse roles, from the dramatic to the bizarre, Dane has definitely created a memorable piece of media for everyone. 

Photographed by Shane McCauley

Styled by Gorge Villalpando

Written by Audra McClain

Grooming: Michelle Harvey at Opus Beauty using Drunk Elephant and Oribe

Flaunt Film: Mynxii White

Styling Assistants: Tamara Pesqueria and Serafim Mgeladze

Location: Hotel Per La