Dax Shepard Reveals New Memoir Will Cover Childhood Sexual Abuse: ‘Weight Is Off My Shoulders’

Desiree AnelloMon, March 2, 2026 at 7:39 PM UTC

0

Dax Shepard is seen on stage during the Natural Products Expo West 2025Credit: JB Lacroix/Getty -

Dax Shepard shared that he has been documenting his experience with childhood sexual abuse in a forthcoming memoir

“When I'm writing it, I cannot help but thinking of people knowing this about me and how still exposed that feels,” he admitted

The actor first revealed that he was “molested” as a child in 2020, noting that the abuse was “minimal,” but had a profound effect on him and his struggles with addiction

Dax Shepard is opening up about some difficult topics in his new memoir.

While speaking to Marcus Mumford during a March 2 episode of his Armchair Expert podcast about detailing his experience with childhood sexual abuse in his 2022 song, “Cannibal,” the Hit and Run actor, 51, revealed that he has been documenting his own abuse story in a forthcoming memoir.

“I want to bond with you on this experience, which is, I have for years on here been acknowledging that I had been molested, and that was its own hurdle to just say that,” Shepard said. “And I got quite comfortable being able to say that. That was fine.”

“Now I'm writing a memoir, and last year really the whole year was about, do I have the balls to write down the details of this?” he continued.

“Because the details were always gonna be mine. I didn't want anyone to be envisioning me. It's weird that that was still some wall between my shame.”

Dax Shepard attends the 83rd Annual Golden Globe AwardsCredit: Amy Sussman/Getty

Adding that he’s had no problem saying that the abuse itself had occurred, Shepard, who shares daughters Lincoln, 12, and Delta, 11, with wife Kristen Bell, admitted that it was most difficult to rehash the details in writing.

“I bet it took me four months to tell that story," he recalled. "And when I'm writing it, I cannot help but thinking of people knowing this about me and how still exposed that feels.”

Advertisement

— sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

“And I was pretty emotional during the few months,” he added, of the writing process. “I was having really weird, kind of, spikes of emotions and moodiness, and I would forget that's why I was having that. But I finished it, and something about it existing there feels like a lot of weight is off my shoulders.”

Shepard first revealed that he was molested as a child in 2020, noting that the abuse was “minimal,” but had a profound effect on him and his later struggles with addiction.

“It took me 12 years to tell anyone,” he said on Sirius XM’s The Jason Ellis Show that December. “And then all that time, I was like, a) ‘It’s my fault,’ as generic as that is … ‘and I’m gay, I must have manifested this because I’m secretly gay.’ I had all these insane thoughts for 11 years or 12 years.”

While he has previously been open about his struggles with addiction, the actor went on to share that he had a breakthrough when his mother shared a statistic with him concerning addiction and abuse.

“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,” he said. “But when you hear a statistic like that, I’m like, ‘Oh no, I was going to be an addict, period.’ “

on People

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL Entertainment”