"What’s so ironic is you make a decision like that, and then weirdly, you’re rewarded."
Dax Shepard would do anything for love -- even turn down the role of a lifetime.
The 44-year-old actor became a fan favorite when he starred as Crosby Braverman in the beloved NBC series Parenthood, but he recently confessed on his podcast, The Armchair Expert, that he nearly turned down the part to pursue a relationship with his now wife, Kristen Bell. At the time, the couple was still very new and he was hesitant about taking a job that would be filmed on the east coast rather than in Los Angeles, where they both lived.
"Kristen was the first person [that] a few years in, basically that choice was presented to me and I chose her which blew my mind," he told his podcast guest, Chris D’Elia. "I got offered Parenthood. I hadn’t acted in a long time, no one was offering me anything and they said, ‘This show shoots in Philadelphia’ and I said, ‘There’s no way I can be in this relationship and move to Philadelphia.'"
Shepard admitted, "I turned that show down, which, by the way, is certainly the first time in my life that I had ever done that. I couldn’t believe I was doing it."
The TV star further confessed that he "very much wanted to be on that show” and despite being so into Bell, he was attracted to the idea of having a “weird, separate life in Philadelphia with some weird apartment where I was anonymous."
Shepard managed to get both the girl and the gig when Parenthood decided to instead shoot in Los Angeles. "What’s so ironic is you make a decision like that, and then weirdly, you’re rewarded," he shared.
Both Bell and Shepard are very open and honest about the ups and downs of their longtime romance.
"Our relationship was turbulent when we started," the 38-year-old actress told ET in January 2017. "But there was a very strong attraction that was obviously physical but also emotional, mental, intellectual, and we worked through a lot of our own problems to get to a really good marriage."
Here's more with the power couple:
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