Dax Shepard's Real Name: Dax Shepard

Quick answer: Dax Shepard is documented professionally as Dax Shepard. Quarter Detroit records his birth date as January 2, 1975, at Beyer Hospital in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and lists the fuller form Dax Randall Shepard (Quarter Detroit; Complex).

Real name and early life

Quarter Detroit, a local Detroit guide, gives the birth name Dax Randall Shepard and says he grew up in a string of Detroit suburbs, above all Walled Lake, while also calling Milford home. His father sold cars, the same account says, and his mother started as a janitor on the midnight shift at General Motors, later moving into fleet management at GM's Milford Proving Ground and then into public relations and event work. A 2012 Complex interview agrees on that car-industry family: Shepard said his father was a car salesman, his mother worked for General Motors, and a stepfather worked as a Corvette engineer, with Shepard visiting GM test tracks as a boy. He graduated from Walled Lake Central High School in 1993, Quarter Detroit says, then left for Los Angeles and trained with the Groundlings improv troupe. This page records the fuller form from Quarter Detroit while using the professional name Dax Shepard in the title, because that middle name is not independently repeated in the Complex interview.

Career highlights

Quarter Detroit and Complex both describe his break on MTV's prank series Punk'd. Quarter Detroit lists later film work including Without a Paddle and Idiocracy, and says he later made the car-chase comedy Hit and Run, the film discussed at length in the Complex interview, along with six seasons of the NBC drama Parenthood. In that interview Shepard also talked about growing up around cars and about using comedy to handle a difficult school experience, including being pulled out of class as a child because he was dyslexic. Since 2018, Quarter Detroit says, he has hosted the podcast Armchair Expert. He is married to fellow Detroit-suburbs native Kristen Bell, a point the same local account records. Quarter Detroit further describes him as an actor and Armchair Expert host who grew up in Detroit's northwestern suburbs.

Name notes for searchers

He is known professionally as Dax Shepard. Quarter Detroit also lists the form Dax Randall Shepard. Searchers looking for Crosby Braverman on Parenthood, a Punk'd regular, or the host of Armchair Expert are usually aiming at the same person.