Kristen Bell has admitted she cries weekly while navigating her marriage and motherhood in the spotlight.
The actress, 46, made the candid confession to Bustle on Thursday, adding that the experience is “brutal” despite her polished public image. “It’s hard,” she told the outlet. “Do not think because I am on your television that it is easy for me.”
Bell said she speaks openly about her struggles so parents with children “in the cyclone of puberty” don’t feel like they’re “the only one[s] doing this,” She continued: “For the good of the people, we should share our dirty stories, we should share our shame, we should share our hardships. But for the good of the one? My main job in life is to protect those two.”
The “Frozen” star and husband Dax Shepard, 51, have built a reputation for radical transparency since tying the knot in 2013. The couple, parents to daughters Lincoln, 12, and Delta, 10, began couples therapy almost immediately after they started dating in 2007. Shepard told Good Housekeeping in 2015 that there were things Bell “didn’t trust about [him],” as well as things he “didn’t trust about her.” “I just kept going back to ‘This person has the thing I want, and I have to figure out how we can exist peacefully.’ So we started [seeing a therapist together] right away,” he added.
Bell has consistently defended their therapeutic approach. “You do better in the gym with a trainer; you don’t figure out how to cook without reading a recipe,” she said in the same interview, adding there was nothing “to be embarrassed about.”
Their financial arrangement has proven equally unconventional. Shepard admitted on “Conan” in 2018 that he “really wanted” a prenuptial agreement when they married, despite telling Bell otherwise. “She said to me at one point, ‘Would you like a prenup?’ because we were getting married. And I said, ‘No, I don’t want a prenup,’ but I really wanted a prenup, really bad,” he recalled. He joked that the dynamic had since flipped, with Bell becoming “much more successful” and accumulating “much more money.”
The couple’s parenting revelations have repeatedly stirred controversy. In 2020, Bell told Today’s Parent via Zoom that their youngest daughter wasn’t out of diapers until age 5, explaining they could only get her to use the toilet by waking her at 11 p.m. When she was a “zombie.” The following year, Bell revealed on Ellen DeGeneres’ digital series “Momsplaining” that she and Shepard used to wait for their daughters to “stink” before bathing them, attributing it to water conservation. She later clarified the admission was a joke, noting she had “lost a lot of faith in the human race” over the public reaction.
Perhaps their most discussed disclosure came during that same 2021 “Momsplaining” episode, when Bell described Shepard helping clear a clogged breast milk duct. “I said to my husband, ‘I just need you to suck this out. We could talk about it. We could be weird about it, or you could just go ahead and nurse,'” she recalled. “He was pulling out and spitting into this cup, and I’ve never been more in love in my life,” she continued, before joking, “He spits. He doesn’t swallow. That’s what I figured out.”
Bell’s comfort with intimate revelations extended to her own sexual history during a September 2025 appearance on Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast. She admitted she wished she had been “more sexually active” before marriage and had “butterflied around a little bit more,” though she told Shepard directly: “I was never this sexual before you.”
Their boundary-pushing commentary has occasionally backfired. In October 2025, Bell shared a photo of the couple hugging on their bed for their 12th wedding anniversary, writing that Shepard once promised he “would never kill” her despite being “heavily incentivized” to do so. The post, shared during Domestic Violence Awareness Month, drew widespread criticism as “unbelievably tone-deaf.” Shepard later acknowledged on his podcast that he had “no clue” the reaction would be so intense.
Shepard has also detailed their deliberate strategy of raising daughters who challenge authority. On a November 2025 “Armchair Expert” episode, he agreed with a friend that Lincoln and Delta “will let it rip” and “seem to have no kind of respect.” “I can understand where that seems completely unruly,” he said. “What I’m prioritizing… Is when they’re 19 and their boss is a f–king creep, I want them to talk back. I want them to be disrespectful. I want them to always advocate for themselves, whether I think they’re right or wrong.”
Bell has employed her children as informal surveillance, she revealed on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.” Her oldest daughter serves as “in-house paparazzi,” sending photos when Shepard orders fast food during Bell’s travels. “Usually when I leave, they can be mischievous when they’re together, my husband and my kids,” she said. “Whenever I leave town, I usually receive, almost immediately, notifications on my phone, ‘You’re McDonald’s has been delivered.’ ‘Your Taco Bell has been delivered.’ They just eat fast food.” She joked that Lincoln acts as her “mole on the ground.”
The family’s most scrutinized parenting choice involved nonalcoholic beer. During a 2023 “Kelly Clarkson Show” appearance, Bell acknowledged it “sounds insane” that Lincoln and Delta occasionally drink it. The habit originated when Shepard, a recovering addict, would carry baby Lincoln on walks while drinking nonalcoholic beer. “As a baby, she was pawing at it, and sometimes she’d suck on the rim of it,” Bell recalled. “So, I think it feels to her like something special, something daddy, something family.” She defended the practice directly: “I’m sort of like, ‘You can judge me if you want. I’m not doing anything wrong. That’s your problem.'”
Bell characterized their dynamic as “opposites attract” in a 2025 interview, explaining that their differences required “a lot of patience” and “a general understanding that we’re probably going to have different viewpoints on almost everything.”
Bell is scheduled to continue promotional appearances for her upcoming projects in Los Angeles.