Actor Dax Shepard is well-respected in Hollywood, but his journey wasn't always easy. Here are
some things you may not know about Dax Shepard's tragic real life story.
As a child, Shepard didn't always have it easy. According to the Los Angeles Times,
he once spoke about being molested when he was seven years old — a series of incidents
that he couldn't talk about for 12 years.
Shepard revealed that it was a neighbor who was older than him, that the incident made
him feel guilty, and that he found himself questioning his sexual identity. He blamed
himself and believed that he somehow, quote, "manifested" the abuse because he must have
been, in his words, "secretly gay."
He added that he battled these issues for more than a decade and felt that the incidents
later added to his struggles as an adult. According to USA Today, Shepard was able to
accept that what happened when he was a kid contributed to his battles with alcoholism
and drug addiction many years later as he tried to make sense of it all.
Shepard's parents separated when he was fairly young. As he mentioned on The Tim Ferriss
Show, the actor saw his mom rebuild her life several times. She went through three divorces
and was also subjected to physical abuse. Shepard said,
"My first stepdad was physically abusive and beat her up in front of us. And it was gnarly."
Shepard saw just how hard it was for his mom to go through life and face her mental health
battles — she tried to take her own life twice. Still, Shepard admired his mother for
the person she was. On why she endured abuse from one of her husbands, she told her son,
"The shame of having failed twice [prevented me from breaking up with my husband]. I had
just got divorced from your dad, and I didn't want to tell my parents."
She added that this was a tough time for all of them, and she felt like they were let down
by her behavior.
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline​ at​ 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.
Shepard knew exactly what it was like to worry about money when he was a kid. As the actor
explained in his interview on The Tim Ferris Show, his earlier experiences shaped his views
on finances in a big way. His mom had to work a night shift janitorial job to keep her family
going. Money was a big deal for the family, and it definitely rubbed off on him. Shepard
said,
"I'm obsessed with money and I have great fear and financial insecurity, completely
irrational."
He added that, for most of his life, he felt he needed to make a certain amount of money
and hoped that hitting that goal would help him feel secure - but it didn't actually help
him feel safe.
Shepard knew he needed to find a way out. The only way to beat his fear was to look
outside his comfort zone and do things that would have previously scared him. One of the
things that helped him was learning to take risks and do what he felt like doing without
stressing about finances. He said,
"[N]ow I'm lucky enough to only do stuff that I am excited to do. I don't actually have
to think about the financial component.
While Shepard has been happily married to actress Kristen Bell since 2013, he had a
rough time before he met her. According to SheKnows, actress Kate Hudson and Shepard
dated for a short period in 2007 — and the relationship was a messy affair, to say the
least. They spoke about their history when Hudson appeared on Shepard's podcast, Armchair
Expert.
When the two were first introduced to each other, Hudson was married to someone else,
and Shepard had a girlfriend. They couldn't help their mutual attraction to each other,
though. Shepard told Hudson,
"I wasn't plotting anything. But I certainly wanted your approval and if you thought I
was cute, all the better."
They met again in Malibu the next year and ended up together for three months in a tumultuous
relationship. Basically, when they weren't having a great time together, they were fighting.
Shepard told her,
"You and I had fights that I really hadn't had with people. We had some big old barn
burners."
Shepard also felt insecure in the relationship because he felt like Hudson was doing a lot
better in the film industry than he was. Still, he felt his time with Husdon helped him learn
a lot about what he should be doing in a relationship, especially in terms of communicating properly
and making an effort.
One of the toughest battles for Shepard was overcoming addiction. According to People
magazine, the actor found it really difficult to stop taking drugs.
"I just had a decade of shames - all kinds of deplorable behaviors while f---ed up."
He opened up on his podcast about how despite having been sober for years, he ended up relapsing
in 2012 when he was in a really tough spot — his dad had been diagnosed with cancer,
and Shepard ended up hurting himself in a motorcycle crash.
The pain prompted him to ask something to help him get through his bad days. He got
some Vicodin pills from his sponsor on the condition that he would visit a doctor. But
at one point, Shepard found himself slipping when he took some of his stepfather's painkillers.
Later, he would take painkillers as prescribed from his doctor, but he'd tweak the dosage
and timing as desired. He said,
"Maybe I don't want to take them at night because I can't sleep when I take them, so
when I get my two at night I don't actually eat them and I keep them for tomorrow morning
so I can make it the dose I want to be."
Unfortunately, he relapsed again in 2020 after he went through both an ATV accident and a
second motorcycle accident. He ended up buying pills on his own, and after feeling extreme
guilt, he later decided to admit everything to his wife.
"I had not gaslit people in 16 years and I was gaslighting people."
In 2017, Shepard shared how difficult it was for him and his family to lose his stepfather
to cancer. According to the Huffington Post, the actor's stepfather was 62 when he ended
up in the hospital, battling cancer. Kristen Bell was pregnant and decided to fly down
to Detroit, where Shepard and his stepfather were. Shepard's stepfather found solace in
the fact that Bell was pregnant with his son's child. Shepard wrote,
"It was an amazing, incredible, perfectly timed surprise. She lifted her shirt up and
he put his hand on her swollen stomach. [...] He was smiling from ear to ear, sitting contently,
unable to put together a sentence, but still capable of connecting to the new family member
we were creating."
For Shepard, this is a memory that he'll never let go of. In fact, he explained how overwhelming
things were because everything happened at once — he received news about his stepfather's
cancer and Bell's pregnancy around the same time. That said, Shepard feels indebted to
Bell for giving his stepfather those priceless moments at the hospital when he was going
through such a rough time, battling his illness and knowing that he wouldn't be around to
see Shepard's kid grow up.
Like so many others in the entertainment industry, Shepard isn't immune to rejection. The actor
once spoke about being let go from the show Will & Grace. In an Armchair Expert conversation
with Will & Grace star Sean Hayes, Shepard got candid about what it was like to be fired
from a show he was so excited to be a part of.
Basically, things seemed great until it was time for the actor's table read, when things
didn't quite pan out the way he expected them to. The show's producers changed their minds
about casting Shepard on the show, which understandably hurt him. He said,
"Had it been any other thing with a bunch of strangers, I would have been like, 'Oh,
whatever. I was at a table read for 45 minutes and then I got fired.'"
But since he was familiar with many of the faces at the table read, his rejection was
more embarrassing and much harder for him to accept.
Shepard has spoken about how he can be quite brutal to himself. As he explained in his
conversation on The Tim Ferriss Show, the actor still questions himself at times and
seeks validation from others. For example, he believes that he could do a much better
job with his podcast. He said,
"I still give myself a C, but I used to be an E because I talk way too much. It's as
if I met you at a bar, and I want your approval, and I'm aware of that, and I'm trying to get
your approval."
"I was trying too hard at the beginning to get people to be sharing something we'd never
heard."
Shepard went on to say that he's been consciously working on letting his guests speak a lot
more. But he says that it's also important for him to make guests feel comfortable and
allow them to be vulnerable by being vulnerable himself, which makes them feel safer and more
inclined to tell their stories.
Shepard's 2020 motorcycle accident didn't just hurt him physically. His morale suffered
as well. According to Entertainment Weekly, the actor had to undergo surgery to recover.
He said that it was his fault when he got carried away at a race track and braked too
hard. He explained,
"I was passing six guys on Sonoma Raceway on a motorcycle and I was braking very, very
hard — hard enough that the back wheel was off the ground for a good 100 yards. I was
totally [to] blame."
Shepard added that his confidence took a beating and that he was heavily scolded by track employees
for his behavior. Shepard, by the way, didn't let the accident stop him that day and continued
to ride, only stopping when he couldn't bear the pain any longer. When he went to the ER
the next day, he finally learned of the extent of his injuries. He said,
"The final tally was four broken ribs, the clavicle is broken in three places, and I
need surgery."
While Shepard has had many successful projects, he's also known what it's like to fail. At
some of his lowest points, he couldn't help but wonder whether it was a better idea for
him to step away from acting altogether. He told podcast host Tim Ferriss about going
through a three-year period of self-doubt where he felt he wasn't an actor but rather
a writer and a director.
He reflected on what happened when his film Chips didn't pan out as expected, and consequently,
Chips 2 would never see the light of day. Shepard recalled that he was confused about
his next steps, and explained,
"I did not have that identity anymore. And they had already commissioned CHiPs 2. I was
already beginning to write that. And I got very depressed for three or four months, maybe
more."
At that point, he was so depressed that he even considered stepping away from the industry
and retiring, asking himself questions like whether he had enough savings to get by without
feeling pressured to work.
While it's fair to say that Shepard and Kristen Bell are a solid couple, things weren't always
so smooth for them. In fact, when their relationship first began, they had to find ways to deal
with their major differences instead of sweeping them under the rug. According to Insider,
Bell had to learn to deal with a habit of nonconfrontation that actually had the effect
of making things worse: when they first started dating, she would escape confrontation during
fights by simply walking away instead of talking to him.
Bell reflected on her habit later, calling it "toxic" and saying that she decided to
change after Shepard told her about it. She explained,
"We'd get in a fight, because we would fight a lot, and I'd, like, yell something then
slam the bedroom door, then I'd slam the front door, then I'd get in my car and then I'd
skid out the driveway and I would sit around the corner in my car and it felt so good."
She added that Shepard spoke to her directly about this issue three months after they started
dating, stating that this was something he couldn't simply ignore and that they needed
better, more open communication. And look at them now!
#relationshipgoals!
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