Michael Easton recalls holding “One Life to Live” costar Kamar de los Reyes' hand on actor's deathbed

"He touched so many lives," Easton says of his late best friend.

Michael Easton is recalling a tender moment with his best friend and former One Life to Live costar Kamar de los Reyes during the actor's death last year.

At Daytime Stands Up, a livestream collaboration event between Stand Up to Cancer and the daytime TV community to raise funds for cancer research, Easton recalled the final moment with his longtime friend before de los Reyes died from cancer at age 56 on Christmas Eve.

"I was holding his hand when he passed, and he was surrounded by family and friends," Easton recounted. "There was so much love around him. He touched so many lives." De los Reyes' memorial service was held in the "biggest room" at Los Angeles' Forest Lawn, yet they still "couldn’t fit everybody in." Easton recalled of his pal's impact.

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"There was people stretched out all the way to outside," he said. "People showed that hadn’t seen him in 20 years."

De los Reyes' played Antonio Vega, a detective and brother of David Fumero's Cristian Vega, on the long-running soap opera from 1995 to 1998 and again from 2000 to 2009, while Easton played John McBain from 1999 to 2012.

Easton and de los Reyes were friends long before they arrived in the fictional town of Llanview, Pa., having first met on set of the 1990 action movie Coldfire. "It was a 30-year friendship with Kamar," Easton said during the livestream event. "We did our first movie together in 1990. I was scared and quiet, and instantly drawn to his bravado and his sense of himself. Kamar was larger than life."

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De los Reyes was the best man at Easton's 2004 wedding to Ginevra Arabia, and Easton is godfather to one of de los Reyes' three sons, Michael, the actor shared. "His loss was profound on all of us. There hasn’t been a day gone by that I haven’t thought of him and his family and what he brought to this world," Easton said, remembering his late friend as a "fighter."

"He was fierce to the end," Easton said. "He never talked about being sick. He always said he was healing, he was going to get better. Even though the odds were stacked from the very beginning —and it’s still really hard for me to talk about — but I was in awe of his strength and his resolve. I would’ve shut down long before he did."

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Watch the previously livestreamed Daytime Stands Up above. Easton's remembrance of de los Reyes begins around the 46 minute mark.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.