Rebecca Gayheart on Eric Dance and the AI Voice Restoration Project
Eric Dane “just had this way of speaking,” his wife Rebecca Gayheart Dane recalled.
The widow of the ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and ‘Euphoria’ star is speaking out for the first time since Eric Dane’s death on February 19 in support of a charity initiative that was of great importance to the actor. Dane died at the age of 53 from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.
In the last weeks of his life, Dane took part in a voice restoration project championed by AI company ElevenLabs. It was a way to restore his ability to communicate – via a synthetic voice created from previous recordings of Dane’s voice – and also an attempt to leave an important part of himself behind for his daughters, Billie, 16, and Georgia, 14.
Dane “was very excited about it because he was losing his voice and it was getting harder for him to communicate every day. So it became kind of an urgency,” Gayheart tells Dane. Variety.
Weeks before he died, Dane was able to hear ElevenLabs recreate his voice with precision based on a series of previous recordings the actor provided. ElfLabs
“He was waiting anxiously to hear it, and when we got it from ElevenLabs, it was a really big moment. It was a powerful moment. We played it and Eric got visibly emotional,” says Gayheart Dane. “And when I heard it, I cried. I think everyone in the room did.”
AI company Eleven Labs has produced 11 short documentaries depicting the use of his voice
ElevenLabs has pledged to provide a free lifetime software license and support services to people suffering from terminal neurological diseases such as ALS, which gradually take away a person’s ability to speak. Based primarily in New York and London, the company specializes in audio technology and offers a vast database of licensed and copyrighted voices that it accesses as an AI platform. ElevenLabs has pledged to help 1 million people with services worth $1 billion.
To spread the message, the company has produced a series of eleven docu-shorts, “11 Voices,” profiling a handful of the more than 7,000 people who have been helped by the technology and voice restoration initiative. Dane was supposed to be one of eleven people profiled for the series, but then his health began to deteriorate, making filming impossible. “11 Voices” debuts March 13 at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas. Gayheart Dane will participate in a panel session related to the premiere in which Dane was scheduled to appear.
“He wanted to advocate for love and for the movement [around ALS] and so I’m here to do this for him,” she says. “For a million people to have a voice to be able to communicate with their children or their loved ones or their caregivers or their doctors or in their work – this is really a huge movement.”
Gayheart Dane says her family is “still in shock” over Dane’s death after being diagnosed with ALS in 2024. The adversity her family faced brought out the best in many people around them, she says.
“I want to thank everyone for their kindness over the years. It’s been challenging and meaningful, and the people are kind,” says Gayheart Dane.
“I’m having trouble receiving all the support and love coming to me from all sides because of Eric and the [entertainment] community that is so generous with their time. They’ve been keeping me and the girls for the past two weeks, and I don’t think they’re going anywhere. I think they are in it for the long haul. Hollywood gets a bad rap. That makes me angry, because we have a beautiful community of people, and I’m so grateful for them.”
ElevenLabs’ AI system is refined to absorb every syllable and nuance of a person’s natural speaking voice from pre-existing recordings. The ability to offer something close to the real thing will be game-changing for families affected by ALS, cerebral palsy, motor neurone disease and other debilitating diseases.
Mati Staniszewski, co-founder of New York-based ElevenLabs, says the voice restoration project is an example of using AI tools to improve one of the characteristics that makes us unique as humans.
“Just being able to help people bring back a little bit of their identity, that incredible element of what makes us human, and seeing that both for the individual and for the people around them – that to us is incredibly motivating for what technology can do for the world,” says Staniszewski. “I think there is nothing better than seeing the positive impact of technology and seeing the happiness of people who use it. We would like to give it to as many people as they need it.”
A few days after Dane got his ElevenLabs voting system, Dane and Gayheart Dane played it for their daughters.
“They said, that’s not a recording. That’s your voice. That’s you. So it was just right. He just had this way of speaking, and they captured it so beautifully,” says Gayheart Dane.
The couple’s teenage daughters “signed up for it, and we were really happy to have it because we knew what was coming down the pike,” says Gayheart Dane. “We were all really struggling with the weight loss he was already experiencing. Knowing we had that in our back pocket just felt really good. I’m sad, and I know Eric is too, that we never really got to use it. But what I do know is that he would want as many people as possible to have access to voice recovery technology.
For Dane, given his legacy as an actor, the voice archive is particularly meaningful.
“Your voice is such a big part of your craft and you’re a storyteller. He really understood how meaningful having the voice was. When his speech started to decline, his ability to speak disappeared. He lost a certain part of himself. He wasn’t able to express things in his own special way. So he really understood how meaningful it was and the extraordinary honor of giving someone their voice back and what that would feel like for others, and he wanted to make sure he did everything he could do to make that possible,” Gayheart Dane says. “11 Voices is a great movement, and I know he’s happy to see this happening. He couldn’t be happier that a million people are getting their voices back – I know that.”
ElevenLabs has made its mark in recent years with its technology and through its focus on entering into high-profile licensing deals with actors, family-owned companies and negotiating a groundbreaking AI deal with SAG-AFTRA. The company has consciously tried to be seen as respectful of creative rights and copyright issues, amid serious fears that AI will be a job killer in Hollywood.
“I learned more about ElevenLabs and all the ways they use someone’s voice, and all the ways a patient with voice loss can use the restored voice they give them. It’s really incredible because it’s so realistic,” says Gayheart Dane. “What we don’t remember is that our voice is such a big part of who we are.”
