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Ty Burrell has picked up multiple Emmy and Screen Actors Guild Awards, and the adulation of sitcom lovers across the globe, for playing brilliantly hapless dad Phil Dunphy in ABC sitcom “Modern Family,” not to mention earning a reported $500,000 per episode during its later seasons. He’s also appeared in one of the best zombie horrors of the 21st century, “Dawn of the Dead,” made his presence known in “The Incredible Hulk” and “Muppets” franchises and provided voices in several animated hits such as “Finding Dory,” “Mr. Peabody & Sherman,” and “Storks.”
But not everything in the Oregon native’s life has turned out so rosy. From the deaths of both his real-life and onscreen fathers and acting career setbacks to shattered sporting ambitions and embarrassing incidents involving electric cars and McDonald’s restrooms, here’s a look at 13 times in which Burrell’s life took a turn for the tragic.
Ty once suffered a teenage identity crisis
A long-running acting career wasn’t always the goal for Ty Burrell. In fact, the five-time Screen Actors Guild Award winner didn’t have any particular goals while attending the University of Oregon on the cusp of adulthood. And as a result, he suffered something of a teenage life crisis.
“I drained the state of weed,” Burrell told Men’s Journal in 2017. “It was like a thatch hut, constantly on fire, and I was living inside. I remember going out to buy weed in my underwear once. Like it was too much work to pull on my pants.” The star’s general sense of apathy may well have been sparked by the footballing dreams that were instantly shattered in his early college days.
Burrell admitted that as a star athlete in his hometown school, he foolishly believed he had what it took to make the big league. But before trying out for his college’s football team, he learned that a much more talented new pal had previously failed to make the cut. “I guess I’d figured maybe I was gonna play in the NFL, but it’s ridiculous that that was actually something I thought.” After dropping out of his studies, the sitcom favorite briefly worked as a firefighter before finding his true calling.
Ty lost his dad to cancer
Ty Burrell grew up in a happy family in the Oregon city of Grants Pass with younger brother Duncan, teacher mother Sheri, and family therapist father Gary. And the latter, in particular, was responsible for the actor’s funny bones, often encouraging his two sons to show off their improv skills over dinner.
Sadly, in 1989, when Ty was only in his early twenties, Gary died from pancreatic cancer. It was a life-changing moment for the “Modern Family” star in more ways than one, as he told The Scotsman several decades later. When asked whether the tragedy had given him the impetus to focus on a career in the entertainment world, Ty replied, “Yes, very much so. I wasn’t a very mature young man and I was pretty lost in my early 20s. A month after my dad passed away, I finally worked up the nerve to go into a theatre class.”
Alongside sibling Duncan — who he also runs a Salt Lake City bar with — Ty decided to write a sitcom loosely based on his early family experiences, including the moment that his dad purchased a middle-of-nowhere country store. Sadly, despite initial interest from ABC, the project was never picked up.
Ty was once so nervous about a meeting that he soiled himself
In 2017, Ty Burrell penned a piece for The New York Times column My First Time which was the pure definition of TMI. For the “Finding Dory” star revealed that he was so nervous meeting one particular agent that he ended up soiling himself.
Luckily, the unfortunate incident happened after he’d shook hands and said goodbye. But the 2022 Super Bowl commercial star was still left mortified at how his body reacted to all the tension. “I stood there for a surprisingly long time before I realized what had happened,” he wrote, going on to admit that he then cleaned himself up at a certain fast-food restaurant.
“I spotted the golden arches across Times Square the way I imagine immigrants spotted the Statue of Liberty,” Burrell recalled. “There I threw my underwear in the garbage. I now had no underwear and, bizarrely, none of the anxiety I had felt mere moments before.” Still, at least the Oregon native was able to take something positive from the experience, interpreting it as though he’d “taken the worst of the business, swallowed it, digested it, discharged it and thrown it away.”
Ty was told his features were too big for TV
Ty Burrell’s bowels weren’t the only thing that took a battering during his all-important first ever-agent meeting. The “Dawn of the Dead” star was no doubt left struggling with severe body confidence after the man who’d caused him to soil himself essentially told him that he wasn’t attractive enough for a career in Hollywood.
In The New York Times piece subtitled “It Was Messy,” Burrell recalled leaning in to hear what he expected was some invaluable words of wisdom. Instead, he was told the following: “Ty, I think your features are too big to get work in television or film. Has anyone ever told you that?” On confirming that no one had ever been that blunt or rude before, the aspiring actor was then hit with yet more shade.
“You could maybe get work in theater, but you’re going to need to shave your arms,” the agent said before explaining that they were too hairy and advising him to come back once he’d had them trimmed. Unsurprisingly, Burrell decided against returning to his office and presumably picking up the razors, too.
Ty struggled when first breaking into acting – and even considered quitting
Ty Burrell could never be labeled an overnight success. Before landing his star-making role on “Modern Family,” the two-time Emmy winner spent years toiling on the audition circuit and living in near-poverty trying to make ends meet.
Speaking with The Telegraph about his early days with wife Holly, Burrell explained, “She came to live with me, against her parents’ wishes, in a roach-infested old army bunker in Mississippi when I was doing a terrible production of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.'” He continued, “I proposed to her by the luggage racks. I always knew she loved me for who I was, because it clearly wasn’t for anything else.”
Although Burrell would soon move out of such squalor, job insecurity was still very much a concern up until early middle-age. “We were having serious discussions about me getting out of the business,” he told The Independent about his and his wife Holly’s plans shortly before the role of Phil Dunphy came along. “It felt like, especially at the age of 40, 41 — OK, this is maybe a good chapter break if I were going to do something else.” But acknowledging that his other skill sets were limited, the Oregon native wisely decided to plow on.
Ty always used to be the guy who got killed
Look at Ty Burrell’s resume before “Modern Family,” and you’ll see lots of roles in which he played the baddie. See serial killer Herman Capshaw in a 2003 episode of “Law and Order,” for example, or boss from hell Enrique in “In Good Company,” or snarky nihilist Steve in the remake of “Dawn of the Dead.” As a result, his screen time was often limited.
“Before ‘Modern Family,’ I was always cast as the guy who got his comeuppance — and was usually killed or fired,” Burrell told The Guardian in 2014. “It’s nice to play someone well-intentioned now,” he added, referring to one of the sitcom world’s most popular dads.
So why does Burrell think that he never got the chance to play the gung-ho hero? Well, in a chat with Time, the Oregon native admitted that he simply doesn’t have the range: “I don’t have the constitution to deliver lines in the way a leading man in an action film can do it, with no irony. I’m not a guy who can stand unblinking and say some perfect thing. I’m too blinky, too flawed.”
Ty felt he’d been disrespected by ABC
It’s hard to imagine anyone other than Ty Burrell inhabiting “Modern Family” dad Phil Dunphy. But bosses at ABC were initially dead against casting the Oregon native in the role he’d soon make iconic.
In Marc Freeman’s book “Modern Family, The Untold Oral History of One of Television’s Groundbreaking Sitcoms,” casting director Jeff Greenberg revealed that he was specifically told by the powers that be to look elsewhere. “Which was devastating to us because he was our guy,” he said (via Entertainment Weekly). “But we were stuck.”
Although Greenberg and his team continued to fight for Burrell’s cause, the man himself very nearly threw in the towel. “My agent and wife both advised me that I was being disrespected by ABC,” he recalled. “They said, ‘Forget it. Let it go. You don’t need to be doing this.’ My wife, being an amazing person, was trying to protect me from going in and having my feelings crushed for a fifth time.” Thankfully, the network, who’d apparently been so reluctant due to Burrell’s underwhelming performance in the failed pilot “Fourplay,” eventually saw sense, and the rest is sitcom history.
Ty got trapped inside his own electric car
Whether it’s shooting himself with a B.B. gun, falling out of second-story windows, or repeatedly getting electrocuted, Ty Burrell is renowned for getting into all kinds of peril on “Modern Family” as clumsy but lovable dad Phil Dunphy. But it turns out that the role might not be that much of a stretch.
Indeed, while appearing on Conan O’Brien’s late-night talk show in 2017, Burrell recalled the moment he nearly baked himself alive when he got trapped inside his own electric car. And to make matters worse, his predicament was witnessed by an army of passers-by, too.
“To them … I looked like the biggest Hollywood a***ole,” Burrell told Conan (via Entertainment.ie). “A guy who is sitting in his car sweating like he has been on 72 hours of cocaine, and either never bothered to learn how to open a window of a car, or has like, a window guy who does that who just was on his break or something.” Thankfully, the actor finally managed to escape with his life intact and a new-found appreciation for the warning, Dogs Die in Hot Cars.
Ty had to miss his on-screen daughter’s wedding
The “Modern Family” cast always appears to have been just as close once the cameras stop rolling. It no doubt pained Ty Burrell a great deal when an emergency in his real-life family left him with no option but to miss his oft-forgetful on-screen daughter Sarah Hyland’s wedding. Even more so because he was supposed to officiate it!
Yes, the actor best known for playing Haley Dunphy had asked Burrell to preside over her 2022 nuptials to Wells Adams. But she was forced to give the important role to another “Modern Family” star, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, at the last minute instead. “So, I got a phone call 12 days before the wedding, and that’s why Ty wasn’t there, he had stuff going on,” the latter explained to ET.
Although Burrell couldn’t be there in person, he still made his presence known by helping Ferguson plan the ceremony. “But I did call Ty, ‘Like what are some of your bullet points that you were going to talk about, because I need to fast track this?'” Ferguson continued. “He hadn’t written anything up, but he had some ideas, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is all really good. This is a jumping-off place.'”
Ty was greatly affected by his onscreen dad’s real-life death
In its final 11th season, “Modern Family” pulled on the heartstrings as much as it tickled the funny bones when Phil’s father, Frank, died. Soon after, Ty Burrell and the rest of the sitcom’s cast sadly had to deal with a case of life imitating art.
Discussing the emotional storyline in 2020, Burrell told Us Weekly that he found it tough bidding his on-screen dad, Fred Willard, a farewell: “He is one of my favorite actors of all time, and I would say he’s influenced me as an actor more than anybody. Going all the way back to “Spinal Tap” and stuff like that. So, it was actually a pretty emotional episode.”
Just four months later, Willard suffered a fatal cardiac arrest at the age of 86. And in a lengthy tribute given to Entertainment Weekly, Burrell once again expressed how much the comedy veteran meant to him: “I loved when I knew I was going to work with Fred, because a day with Fred meant somebody who was always prepared, somebody who was always going to bring extra stuff to the table, somebody who never added drama off-screen.” Burrell also acknowledged that his most beloved character wouldn’t exist without Willard’s influence, concluding his heartfelt words with “I love him, and I miss him.”
Ty struggled with the end of Modern Family
After 11 seasons and a whopping 250 episodes of playing bumbling dad Phil Dunphy, Ty Burrell — and the rest of his longtime castmates — had to say goodbye to the at times darkly secretive “Modern Family.” And unsurprisingly, the two-time Emmy winner found the process hard. In fact, he compared it to a funeral.
“You can’t really process it until you’re there,” Burrell told Entertainment Weekly shortly after the finale had wrapped in 2020. “I had a sense for how it was going to be, but in the end … it was like a beautiful torture. It was like being at a wedding and a funeral at the same time.”
Burrell went on to say that although the cast and crew enjoyed shooting the last episode, its significance soon turned them all into blubbering wrecks. “But in every scene that got filmed towards the end, it got a little tearier and a little harder. And then when we finally got to the last day, it was more of the funeral part.” And the mourning didn’t stop there, either. “It did feel like grieving for not being with these people every day, like we have been,” the Oregon native added, referring to the fact that the likes of Sofia Vergara, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and candid on-screen wife Julie Bowen were all now going their separate ways.
Fans thought Ty had died due to a cast reunion photo
The “Modern Family” cast and crew gave fans one almighty scare in 2023 when they posted various reunion photos without father figure Phil Dunphy, aka Ty Burrell. Well, not in the flesh, anyway. And one particular caption from Jesse Tyler Ferguson didn’t exactly quash fears that the actor had died.
“Nearly perfect reunion,” the man best known as Mitchell Pritchett wrote on Instagram (via The Independent) alongside a snap of the big occasion which included a framed photo of Burrell in his absence. “We were only missing you, Ty! So we brought a cute pic in your place.” And many social media users believed that the only explanation for this no-show was death!
Of course, fans were quickly reassured, although Ferguson was keen to ensure that such confusion could never happen again. “When the SAG Awards happened, he was supposed to do something else,” the redhead told “The Tonight Show” (via Today) in 2024, referring to his on-screen brother-in-law. “I was like, ‘Ty! You can’t miss it again! People will really think you’re dead!’ It’s like, ‘We need to present you to show that you’re not dead!’ So he made it.”
Ty experienced a career setback when his 2024 sitcom never made it to air
Several years after the semi-autobiographical sitcom he wrote with his brother Duncan appeared to get stuck in development hell, Ty Burrell experienced another small-screen setback when his proposed return to ABC got shelved.
Burrell was due to return to the home network of “Modern Family” with “Forgive and Forget,” a comedy penned by “The Santa Clauses” and “Punky Brewster” reboot writer Eugene Garcia-Cross. The Oregon native, who was also on board as executive producer, starred as Hank, a “perennial life of the party” who, following a surprise diagnosis, tries to reconnect with his grown-up son before it’s too late.
Burrell had been expected to follow in the footsteps of Tim Allen, the “Home Improvement” star who returned to ABC in 2025 in “Shifting Gears.” But sadly, the network’s bosses weren’t impressed enough with the “Forgive and Forget” pilot to greenlight a proper series, and the multi-cam comedy is unlikely ever to see the light of day.
