His parents divorced when he was just three years old.
At age seven, he was sexually abused.
As he grew up, he spiraled deeper into addiction, turning to drugs and alcohol to numb the pain of his past.
But today, this American actor, comedian, and filmmaker is living a very different life — alongside his world-famous wife.
Born on January 2, 1975, at Beyer Hospital in Ypsilanti, Michigan, he would go on to become one of the most recognizable faces in Hollywood. His mother worked at General Motors, and his father was a car salesman. She named him after the wealthy playboy Diogenes Alejandro Xenos from Harold Robbins’ novel The Adventurers.
His early years were turbulent. After his parents divorced, something truly devastating happened: he was sexually abused. He kept the secret for more than 12 years — an unbearable burden for any child.
“All that time, I was like… ‘It’s my fault,’ as generic as that is. I’m like, I’m gay, I must have manifested this because I’m secretly gay,” he said in 2016. He believes this trauma played a role in his later struggles with addiction — a connection echoed by a statistic his mother, a court-appointed advocate for foster children, encountered through her work.
“If you’ve been molested, you only have a 20 percent chance of not being an addict,” he said. “And I was like, ‘Hm, interesting,’ because in my mind I just like to have a f—ing great time. But when you hear a statistic like that, I’m like, ‘Oh no, I was going to be an addict, period.’”
Despite the darkness that followed him, he had role models — especially his mother. She started at GM as a night-shift janitor and worked her way up to owning four shops and overseeing publicity events for magazine journalists.
Working with Ashton Kutcher Between ages 14 and 18, he traveled with his mother from racetrack to racetrack. Later, he attended Santa Monica College before moving to Los Angeles. A friend introduced him to The Groundlings improv troupe, where he auditioned for the first time.
He took improvisation and sketch comedy classes, eventually joining The Groundlings’ Sunday Company alongside Melissa McCarthy, Octavia Spencer, Fortune Feimster, Tate Taylor, and Nat Faxon.
From 2003 onward, he appeared on the improv-style show Punk’d with Ashton Kutcher, continuing when the series was revived in 2012.
His first breakthrough came with the comedy Without a Paddle. Despite negative reviews, it earned over $65 million worldwide by 2009.
The movie that changed his life He continued appearing in films, landing his first lead role in Let’s Go to Prison (2006) and a main role in Baby Mama (2008) opposite Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.
Everything changed when he played a suitor in When in Rome. Though a small part, it had a huge impact — his co-star would become his future wife: Kristen Bell.
They announced their engagement in 2010 but delayed their wedding until California legalized same-sex marriage.
He said that aside from one year in high school experimenting with drugs, his substance abuse didn’t begin until age 18. After that, he struggled for years with alcohol, cocaine, and prescription pills.
In a Playboy interview, he reflected on how his past affected his early relationship with Bell.
“Kristen’s a good girl. She grew up very Christian, went straight to college, did great in school and started work immediately. She’s charitable and philanthropic and rescues dogs,” he said.
“All the things I’d done were terrifying to her, and she had a hard time believing I would ever be able to stay married and monogamous and a father and all those things. For the first year and a half we were together, that was what we battled over almost weekly.”
So who is this actor, filmmaker, and podcast host? None other than Dax Shepard.
His life hasn’t been without setbacks — he revealed a relapse after 16 years of sobriety and shared on Chelsea Clinton’s In Fact podcast how he talks about it with his daughters.
Shepard said he’s upfront with Lincoln and Delta, telling them he attends AA meetings twice a week because, “I’m an alcoholic, and if I don’t go there, then I’ll drink and then I’ll be a terrible dad.”
The day after his relapse, Bell — then pregnant with Lincoln — flew to be with him. Shepard admitted he had taken pills, and Bell reassured him:
“She’s like, ‘You clearly need to call someone in AA, but I would say you’re f—ed up from this accident, you got high with your dad, keep it moving. You don’t need to redefine it. You didn’t lose eight years,’ which was so comforting,” he said.
“So that was eight years ago,” he said in 2020. “And now I have this experience where I did that, I felt bad, but there wasn’t really any fallout from it.”
