Dax Shepard breaks down in tears as he reveals wife Kristen Bell's kind act for his dying father

Dax Shepard got very emotional while recalling his wife Kristen Bell's touching gesture during his father's final days. 

Shepard, 51, shared the story in a recent interview with Anderson Cooper, as he and the CNN journalist spoke about grief.

The actor remembered caring for his father, Dave Shepard, in a Detroit hospital after he had been diagnosed with a small-cell carcinoma in 2012, and feeling overwhelmed by the 'unending parade' of well-wishers who came to visit.

'I was starting to resent that I couldn’t just be in there with my dad, and I was starting to get quite overwhelmed with that,' The Parenthood alum said.

At one point he stepped outside the hospital to call his then-fiancée Bell, 45, to vent about his feelings. The actress was seven months pregnant at the time and had stayed behind in Los Angeles.

'I was complaining, and she said, "It's okay, I'm here. Look to the left,"' Shepard recalled as he broke down in tears. 

'Mind you, we live in California and I'm in Detroit,' Shepard went on. 'And I look to my left and she's standing there, seven months pregnant.'

Shepard praised his 'intuitive' wife, stating, 'She had flown, she knew I was struggling and she had flown and not told me and figured out where this hospital was and was standing next to the car. What a champ, you know?'

The couple then got to introduce his father to their unborn child.

'He got to feel her belly,' the actor said, as Cooper shared a photo of the moment with the audience.

'Look how cute she looks with that belly,' Shepard said. He previously shared the photo on Instagram in June 2022 for Father's Day. 

Cooper also got emotional, as he read aloud a 2013 blog post Shepard wrote about the tender moment.

'She lifted her shirt up and he put his hand on her swollen stomach. He left it there for the better part of an hour. He was smiling from ear to ear, sitting contently, unable to put together a sentence, but still capable of connecting to the new family member we were creating.'

'He wasn’t going to make it to the birth, but that didn’t get in the way of him meeting the new baby. It was an emotional and triumphant moment. One I will never forget. If I live to be a thousand, I will still be in debt to my wife for giving him that one last thrill.' 

Dave died just three months before Shepard and Bell's daughter Lincoln was born. 

The pair went on to get married in October of that year. They welcomed their second daughter Delta in December 2014.

Elsewhere in the conversation with Cooper, Shepard reflected on his parents' divorce when he was just three, opening up about his father’s struggles with addiction and the 'judgmental' view he once held of him.

That judgment changed when his father was diagnosed with cancer, as Cooper read another one of Shepard's blog entries that discussed forgiveness. 

'One of the hidden benefits of cancer is that it can erode grudges the way WD40 dissolves rust. Before long, the once formidable chip on my shoulder had melted into something the size of a nicotine patch. Apologies were exchanged. Tears were had. Hugs were frequent and lingering.'

Shepard later added that after becoming a father himself he was able to start feeling a lot more 'compassion' for his own dad. 

The sweet story comes months after Shepard and Bell faced some heat for previous comments about their relationship.

The couple received a deluge of backlash over Bell's post in October celebrating their anniversary.

'Happy 12th wedding anniversary to the man who once said to me: "I would never kill you. A lot of men have killed their wives at a certain point. Even though I'm heavily incentivized to kill you, I never would,"' Bell wrote with a heart emoji.

Commenters flew into a frenzy of outrage, slating Bell for the 'offensive' and 'insensitive' joke and noting it was Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

In January, Shepard also came under fire for his comments about Sabrina Carpenter after declaring he is 'obsessed' with the blonde beauty.

During a recent episode of Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast, with Saturday Night Live star Marcello Hernandez as a guest, he made a comment about the singer that left people uncomfortable.

'If I'm you again and I'm 28, I'm going to try to date her with all my might. Are you not trying your hardest to marry her?' he asked the SNL star on the show.

However, Hernandez asserted his loyalty to his girlfriend and swiftly shut down the idea by reminding Shepard that he is in a relationship.

'I'm in a relationship with a Dominican girl. She's an architect. She's unreal. She went to Yale,' he told the actor.

'But Sabrina's awesome,' he added.

Listeners were horrified by Shepard's comment about the Please, Please, Please singer, taking to social media to slam him as 'creepy.'