Dax Randall Shepard is an American actor, writer, director and podcast host. He is best known for his work in the feature films Without a Paddle, Zethura: A Space Adventure, Employee of the Month, Idiocracy, Let’s Go to Prison, Hit and Run, and CHiPs, the last pair of which he also wrote and directed. Take a look below for 26 more awesome and interesting facts about Dax Randall Shepard.

1. Shepard was born in Highland Township, Oakland County, Michigan, in a suburban Detroit.

2. He is the son of Laura LaBo, who worked at General Motors (GM), and David Robert “Dave” Shepard, Sr. (deceased), who was a car salesman.

3. His parents divorced when he was 3 years old.

4. Shepard’s mother ended up growing a substantial business by the time he was in high school.

5. She worked car shows with traveling events at race tracks.

6. She started as a janitor on the midnight shift at GM, then worked in fleet management at the GM proving grounds in Milford, Michigan, then hosted hospitality days for all the GM family members, eventually moving into public relations at an ad agency.

7. She went back to GM, ending up as owner of four shops that managed publicity events for magazine journalists.

8. From the age of 14 to 18, Shepard worked for his mother on the road, going from racetrack to racetrack.

9. For about two years, Shepard had a stepfather who was an engineer on the Corvette.

10. Shepard’s mother has been married four times; Shepard said he’s had three stepfathers.

11. According to Shepard, his mother named him for the rich playboy Dax (Diogenes Alejandro Xenos), in Harold Robbins’ novel The Adventurers.

12. He has an older brother, David Shepard, who lives in Oregon, and a younger half-sister, Carly Hatter, whom he cast in two films: 2012’s Hit and Run and 2017’s CHiPs.

13. Shepard has said that he was raised in Milford, although he lived in a lot of places in suburban Detroit, growing up primarily in Walled Lake, Michigan.

14. He graduated from Walled Lake Central High School in 1993 before enrolling in The Groundlings School.

15. After attending Santa Monica College and West Los Angeles College, Shepard transferred to UCLA, where he graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in Anthropology. He had a deal with his mother that if he went to college she would pay his rent.

16. Shepard has said he wasn’t interested in child-acting per se. He was a class clown in school, had a sense he was funny, and wanted to do stand-up.

17. He has also said that he was more excited about being on talk shows than he was actually acting. Although he had friends who did stand-up in Detroit, he was too scared. Shepard thought if he moved to California “that commitment would force him to do it.”

18. Shepard met actress Kristen Bell, also a native of Detroit’s northern suburbs, at the birthday party of a mutual friend (Michael Rosenbaum); they began dating in late 2007.

19. The couple announced their engagement in January 2010. However, they decided to delay marriage until the state of California passed legislation legalizing same-sex marriage.

20. After section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on June 26, 2013, Bell asked Shepard to marry her through Twitter, which he accepted. They were married at the Beverly Hills County Clerk’s Office on October 17, 2013.

21. They have two daughters, born in March 2013 and December 2014.

22. Shepard has said that, except for a year in high school when he used drugs (in 1992, leading to the police and his mother getting involved), he did not have a substance abuse problem until he was 18 years old. After many struggles, Shepard got sober in September 2004.

23. Shepard races motorcycles at Buttonwillow Raceway, including his Ducati Hypermotard 1100S and Suzuki GSX-R1000.

24. He donates much of his time to the Hollenbeck Youth Center, an after-school program that provides opportunity to at-risk inner-city youth.

25. He is an avid car enthusiast and can rebuild an engine (pre-computer). He has a 1967 Lincoln Continental (which he made the movie Hit and Run about) and races off-road.

26. Shepard and his wife are advocates of California Senate Bill 606, called “no-kids paparazzi”. Bell said: “We’re not saying that we can’t be newsworthy. We’re saying that our child is not newsworthy.”