Dax Shepard is quite the mystery.
You know so much about him as it relates to his relationship with wife Kristen Bell. But when it comes to Dax on his own, there is so much we don’t know.
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For instance, did you know that his first acting job was working with Ashton Kutcher? For more, keep reading about him with these 10+ facts.
1. His feelings for wife Kristen Bell were one-sided at first.
![Image credit: [Instagram @daxshepard]https://www.instagram.com/p/CEiyq84BvgJ/)](https://static.diply.com/hqODULqjyxWvlMMwfU6e.png)
The sparks were totally one-sided when these two met at a sushi restaurant with some mutual friends.
“The only thing I remember is that he talked so much,” Kristen recalled to Sunday TODAY with Willie Geist.
“This guy can ta-alk,” she continued.
She also didn’t know who he was. “I’m like, ‘Is that one of the guys from Jackass or something?’ … And then we left. There were no sparks whatsoever.”
2. Thankfully, a chance meeting two weeks later paid off.
When they met at a hockey game, they saw each other and started to flirt.
Dax’s persistence is also to thank, as he texted her the next day and asked her out.
3. His first paying acting job was on *Punk’d*.
He played an actor on his best friend, Ashton Kutcher’s, hidden-camera show.
He’s taken on a few small roles since then, but nothing was as big as his time as Crosby Braverman on Parenthood .
He actually almost turned down the role since he was scared a long-distance relationship with Kristen wouldn’t work.
“I chose her, which blew my mind,” Shepard said on his Armchair Podcast .
Thankfully, everything worked out when filming moved closer to him.
4. He’s named after a famous fictional book character.
When a fan asked about the backstory of his name, he revealed that his mother chose his name after reading The Adventurers by Harold Robbins .
This was the rich playboy protagonist who turned out to be a family man instead.
5. He taught his six-year-old how to ride a motorcycle.
This may sound crazy, but Kristen explained that it’s actually for safety reasons during an episode of the YouTube series “Hiking with Kevin,” with host Kevin Nealon.
Dax said that he doesn’t want his daughter to ride on the back of a future boyfriend’s motorcycle in the future.
“‘If she rides, she’s gonna want to either ride her own or he’s gonna be on the back.,” Kristen recalled Dax as saying.
“And I want to know that she has the training from me and the wherewithal to do it.’”
6. He and Kristen postponed getting married in support of gay rights.
As strong advocates of the LGBTQ community, they decided to postpone getting married until same-sex marriage was legal in California!
It just didn’t feel right for them to have a wedding and celebrate when their same-sex couple friends couldn’t marry freely.
7. Before his recent relapse, he was 16 years sober.
It was on the Sept. 25 episode of his Armchair Expert podcast that Dax revealed he had relapsed by taking opioids.
This stemmed from a bad motorcycle accident from back in August.
“For the last eight weeks maybe, I don’t really know…I’m on them all day,” Shepard said about taking Vicodin to manage pain.
Once this got out of hand, he had to confess his relapse to his friend and podcast co-host, Monica Padman, along with Kristen.
He began going to AA meetings from there and working hard to get his life back on track.
8. Kristen was supportive of Dax for getting the help that he needs.
He’s soo lucky to have her.
In a virtual interview on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in October, she said that Dax was doing a lot better.
“He is actually doing really great,” she said.
“Everybody is up against their own demons,” Bell continued, adding that “sometimes it’s anxiety and depression. Sometimes it’s substance abuse.”
She also said that they returned to couple’s therapy.
“I will continue to stand by him because he’s very, very worth it,” she said.
9. He lost his father to cancer in December 2013.
This is something that still affects the actor to this day.
Thankfully, he’ll always cherish one particular memory between his late father, Kristen Bell, and Dax’s unborn child. He wrote about the moment in this blog post .
“At one point, and unbeknownst to both of us, my wife walked into the room,” Dax wrote about Kristen surprising Dax and his father at the hospital.
“She lifted her shirt up and he put his hand on her swollen stomach. He left it there for the better part of an hour.”
10. Dax wrote in his blog post that this touching gesture left his father smiling from ear to ear.
“He wasn’t going to make it to the birth, but that didn’t get in the way of him meeting the new baby,” he wrote.
“It was an emotional and triumphant moment. One I will never forget.”
11. He has a successful side business as a landlord.
Dax mixed business with pleasure with Kristen when they became landlords in their spare time.
Together, they own Pringus Property LLC , a company that owns two residential buildings. They even helped their tenants during the coronavirus pandemic.
12. He once accidentally sent a flirty text to Kristen’s mom.
Oh, the cringe! Kristen relayed all the cringe-worthy details on Ellen .
“[My Mom] She was coming into town and sends him a text like, ‘Be there by 11,’” Bell began. He followed this with a lot of eggplant emojis.
“When he did it, he went ‘Oh no! I made a huge mistake!’ And I was like ‘What?’ and he shows me the phone,” she continued.
Thankfully, Kristin’s mom didn’t know what the eggplant emoji meant.
Maybe she thought that he was going to make her eggplant parm? Regardless, PHEW.
