Rebecca Gayheart<\/strong> walks onto the set of her NewBeauty<\/em> shoot in New York with a confession: She hasn\u2019t done a photo shoot in forever, and she\u2019s nervous. She has just flown in from Los Angeles, she didn\u2019t sleep and, in addition to the jet lag, a big part of her mind is still back home with her two teenage daughters. It\u2019s a very human entrance from a woman who has spent more than three decades in front of the camera, and who has had a harder year than most.<\/p>\n She\u2019s in town to promote a book, but she\u2019s quick to point out that it isn\u2019t hers. My Book of Days: A Memoir in Moments ($30), out November 3, belongs to her husband, Eric Dane, the Grey\u2019s Anatomy and Euphoria star who died of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig\u2019s disease) in February at 53. He was writing it right up to the end.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a little more difficult than I anticipated only because it\u2019s not my book\u2014it\u2019s Eric\u2019s book,\u201d Gayheart says. \u201cIt brings up a lot of different emotions, obviously. I\u2019m trying to really be mindful that this is his book; I\u2019m just the one doing the promotion for it.\u201d<\/p>\n She\u2019s doing all of it while parenting two teenagers through what she calls a couple of the \u201ctougher years\u201d of high school. Billie is a junior, deep in the college process, and Georgia is a freshman. Gayheart reads the memoir as something meant for them. \u201cIt\u2019s dedicated to his daughters, and it\u2019s such a gift that he left for them, and for his legacy, and for his fans and for anyone who is curious about Eric,\u201d she says. \u201cIt really does explain who he was and why he was the way he was.\u201d<\/p>\n Dane was open about his diagnosis and became an outspoken ALS advocate in the time he had. Gayheart hopes readers living with the disease\u2014or anyone caring for someone who is\u2014find hope in the book and carry that work forward. She\u2019s also candid about how hard it is to explain to her daughters why there\u2019s still no cure. \u201cThat is the part that is hard to wrap your head around,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Still, the memoir itself is hopeful, she says. Dane tells his story through a lens of enjoying every day, staying present and taking nothing for granted. For everyone else, she sums up its message in four words: Don\u2019t wait to live. \u201cBe the best friend you can be. Be the best father you can be. Be the best person you can be,\u201d she says. \u201cWe put things off, but this is not a dress rehearsal. This is life. Whatever you\u2019re doing today is your life.\u201d<\/p>\n She knew his stories, of course. What gave her pause on page was the feeling beneath them. Tales from his childhood that he\u2019d always played for laughs, like one about hanging from a bar, read very differently in the book. \u201cHe would tell those stories in a funny way, but in the book, I think it resonates on a deeper level as things that really shaped him as a person for a long time,\u201d she says. \u201cI was a little surprised at maybe some of the emotions under those stories.\u201d<\/p>\n At home, she and the girls are still working out how to keep his memory close, less than a year after his death. They\u2019ve seen a medium, which she admits with a laugh might not be everyone\u2019s first move\u2014but her daughters were all in. \u201cNow, they look for the signs, and we see the signs all the time,\u201d she says. They talk to him and about him, and she encourages the girls to say out loud what they\u2019re feeling. \u201cI remind them that he is their protector even more so now,\u201d she says. \u201cI remind them that it\u2019s okay to miss him and to feel sad, but to also not forget that what he would want is for them to feel joy.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s lightness in her house, too, and a lot of it is coming out of her old closet. Gayheart\u2019s late-\u201990s run, from Scream 2<\/em> to Urban Legend<\/em> to Darren Stein\u2019s cult favorite Jawbreaker<\/em>, made her a defining scream queen of the era. She has a front-row view of how hard that decade is back. For reasons she can\u2019t explain, she held on to a lot of her \u201990s clothes. None of them are in her closet anymore.<\/p>\n \u201cBillie and Georgia have taken all of my clothes from the \u201990s, and they wear them on the daily. They\u2019re in heavy rotation,\u201d she says. \u201cThey\u2019re dressing exactly how we dressed in the \u201990s\u2014and they are not pleased about the pieces I gave away!\u201d<\/p>\n She has a theory about why Gen Z is so drawn to the era. \u201cI think they are craving what they don\u2019t have, that I so wish they had, which was just a simpler time without the phones, without the technology, where you really had freedom to just live and see where the day took you,\u201d she says. \u201cEveryone has everyone\u2019s location. We just have way too much information.\u201d<\/p>\n The nostalgia runs through her work right now, too. In September, she played the hilariously well-meaning but naive Principal Sherwood in the workshop production of the Jawbreaker<\/em> musical at the Hudson Theatre in Los Angeles, reuniting with Darren Stein, who wrote and directed the original film. She also starred in Lifetime\u2019s The Ocean Between Them<\/em> opposite Jessica Lord, a fact-inspired survival story about a mother and daughter on vacation in Belize, with Georgia playing her younger daughter. And she co-stars with Rob Riggle and Odessa A\u2019Zion in the supernatural indie drama Nickels<\/em>, a story about grief, faith and second chances.<\/p>\n Long before the slasher films, the Broadway runs in Steel Magnolias<\/em> and Boeing-Boeing<\/em>, the TV years on Dead Like Me <\/em>and Nip\/Tuck<\/em>, and a turn opposite Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood<\/em>, Gayheart was the Noxzema Girl. And a whole generation has not forgotten. During the same trip to New York, she was having lunch with friends at Via Carota in the West Village. While waiting for the ladies\u2019 room, she complimented a college-age girl, who explained she was waiting for her mom. When the mom came out, she stopped cold. \u201cShe said: \u2018Oh, my God, you\u2019re the Noxzema Girl,\u2019\u201d Gayheart recalls. \u201cI was like, \u2018Oh, you must be 55.\u2019 She was like, \u2018Yes! I\u2019m 54.\u2019 Her daughter had no idea who I was. But it\u2019s honestly shocking to me that after all these years, someone still refers to me as the Noxzema Girl.\u201d<\/p>\n Back then, she was simply thrilled to be working, and she didn\u2019t own a million products. Her daughters, raised on tutorials, are a different story. \u201cThey\u2019re very good with how they take care of their skin, and they have hair routines, and they\u2019re so good at doing makeup,\u201d she says. \u201cWe had Seventeen<\/em> and Sassy <\/em>Magazine, and that was it.\u201d<\/p>\n Her own routine is still pared down to five things. Sleep and lots of water come first, she says, followed by Shani Darden\u2019s Retinol Reform ($75) and a lip treatment and barrier cream from Dr. Jason Diamond. As for her daughters? \u201cMy kids are trying new things every day, and it\u2019s fun to watch them enjoy it all.\u201d<\/p>\n My Book of Days: A Memoir in Moments<\/em> by Eric Dane is out November 3.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rebecca Gayheart walks onto the set of her NewBeauty sh […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3583"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.sanity.io\/images\/0vv8moc6\/newbeauty\/69e6734c546cc76cb3015c2849366e7861f1eb6c-4200x3300.jpg?w=1200&auto=format&q=70\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.sanity.io\/images\/0vv8moc6\/newbeauty\/2b5623fcefcf2ad0fa5eea105fa7e9dd7809a844-3300x4200.jpg?w=1200&auto=format&q=70\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.sanity.io\/images\/0vv8moc6\/newbeauty\/0f69d804105c3c0c103e613ef53faa2b98b3f717-4200x3300.jpg?w=1200&auto=format&q=70\")