You probably know Ariel Winter as Alex Dunphy on Modern Family. Since we've seen her grow
up on TV before our very eyes, we know just how much she's changed over the years. But it
may surprise you to discover just exactly how dramatic her transformation has been.
Ariel Winter has called Hollywood home for her entire life, so it only makes sense that
she was destined for stardom. While most kids her age were preparing to go to kindergarten,
she was entering the entertainment industry with an appearance in a Cool Whip commercial in 2002.
As she recounted to People Magazine in 2016,
"My mom put me in the industry when I was 4. I love what I do,
but I don't know if it's a choice I would have made on my own."
"I'm going to be an actress."
Despite her misgivings, acting was something that Winter truly excelled at immediately.
She soon started booking guest roles on TV shows like ER and Monk. She had such a busy
shooting schedule that she started being homeschooled when she was in second grade.
All of her interactions were with adult actors,
and growing up in the entertainment industry was all she ever knew. As she explained to People,
"There's a lot of rejection. I heard 'no' thousands of times. That was hard to cope with."
When Winter was only 7, she even began dying her hair black to help her land more roles.
Although, in her first recurring part, there wasn't any need to worry about her hair.
In 2007, when she was 9 years old, Winter booked her first recurring role on a TV series,
and it didn't even matter what she looked like. For seven years,
she voiced Gretchen on the animated Disney Channel series Phineas and Ferb. She starred
alongside big names like Ashley Tisdale, Alyson Stoner, Jane Lynch, Kelly Osbourne, and Sandra Oh.
But she never actually interacted with those other actors. As she revealed to ClevverTV in 2010,
"We don't see the other characters very often."
For the next few years, Winter also worked on a few other animated series,
like Jake and the Neverland Pirates, in which she played a mermaid. Coincidentally enough,
she was named after the animated Disney character Ariel from The Little Mermaid.
Then in 2012, Winter booked her first leading role in an animated series called Sofia the First.
This gig was particularly special, as playing the young princess required
Winter to use her voice in an entirely new way: by singing. Around the same time,
the actress began posting videos of her vocal range online. As it turns out,
singing was always something she'd hoped to do professionally. As she told People Magazine,
"I started out writing poems and then little
scripts and then my poems turned into lyrics, and then I started singing."
In 2009, at the age of 11, Winter booked the role of Alex Dunphy on a little sitcom called
Modern Family. This time around, audiences everywhere got to enjoy a lot more of her than
just her voice. As a series regular, she had the opportunity to spend real in-person time alongside
her co-stars each and every day. The entire cast and crew quickly felt like family to her,
and fans clearly picked up on the good vibes, as it was one of ABC's most successful shows
of the 2010s. As Winter told Good Morning America around the time that the show was ending its run,
"We all really liked each other from the beginning. There was good chemistry between us."
Modern Family ended up running for 11 seasons from 2009 to 2020, and Winter soon found herself
experiencing one of the signature features of showbiz fame. As she put it in a 2013 interview,
"It's now, like, I go in public, and people recognize me,
and they want to take pictures with me, and they know my name."
Growing up isn't easy, and it can be even harder when you're doing it in front of the entire world,
which Ariel Winter became very aware of during her time in the spotlight on Modern Family.
As she explained in 2020 on the Chicks in the Office podcast,
"As you get older, you go through so many different phases with your
body. It's hard to do in general without people commenting on it,
and then you have 3,000 comments on a photo you post that you feel like you looked good in."
She was even more blunt when she told Teen Vogue,
"People on the internet really suck."
Though Winter was grateful to have such a long run on Modern Family,
seeing herself on screen would sometimes make her uncomfortable because of the backlash.
"It's like a double-edged sword."
Because of all this, animated roles were a bit of a security blanket for Winter.
As she put it to Elite Daily in 2020,
"I feel comfortable there. It's a shorter amount
of time and I could go looking like a trash bag and [...] nobody cares."
As a teenager, Winter discovered that her body was changing a little more
dramatically than she was perhaps prepared for. As she explained to Glamour in 2015,
"Once I developed, I couldn't really play 12 or 13 or 14 anymore. They'd want to send me
out for 18 or 19, but the problem with 18 or 19 is that I'm not 18 yet [...] [Having large
breasts] automatically makes someone look older and more mature. So it definitely was a problem."
On the set of Modern Family, Winter even had to have her chest
strapped down while filming. Unfortunately, it seemed as though everybody was focusing
on what she looked like instead of what really mattered. As she put it to Glamour,
"That's all people would recognize me by. Not, 'Oh, she does great work on Modern Family."
With people commenting on her changing body, Winter was in pain,
and not just emotional pain. Because of her growing bust,
she had back problems and even difficulty standing up straight. So in 2015, she decided
to undergo breast reduction surgery to drop two cup sizes. And instead of keeping it secret,
she felt that it was important to make her story public. As she explained to Glamour,
"I didn't want to not tell anybody and then have another million stories [say],
'What happened to Ariel? She looks so different.' And I also think there's
some good that can come from [telling] my story. It's something that I did to better
my life and better my health and I think that that can benefit a lot of young girls."
"I just didn't feel right, and I did it for myself."
While Alex Dunphy had a loving sitcom family, the actor who played her had an entirely different
situation. At 14 years old, Ariel Winter ended up in the custody of her older sister, Shanelle,
after allegations that her mother Crystal, the one who had forced her into the entertainment
industry, was physically and emotionally abusive to her. Winter has avoided speaking publicly about
the situation, but her mom has spoken out against her daughter with an appearance on Dr. Phil and
an interview with In Touch. Winter later addressed the matter on The Ellen DeGeneres Show by saying,
"It just didn't really try and fix anything with me. It just tried to make herself look better."
So in 2015, when Winter was 17 years old,
she officially became emancipated from her mother. From that point forward,
she was legally in charge of her own money, her own living arrangements, and her own life.
After more than a decade on the air,
it was announced that Modern Family would be ending its run in the spring of 2020.
At the time, Winter was 22 years old and had spent exactly half of her life shooting
the iconic sitcom. As she admitted during a 2019 appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show,
"It's been 11 years, and I think, you know, everybody's ready to do new things,
but it's obviously going to be really sad that we won't get to see each other every week."
Though Winter and her castmates would've loved to continue the show,
they knew they had done the series justice. As she explained to Good Morning America,
"There are families that have talked to us about how Modern Family has impacted
them and how we’ve normalized so many things and impacted so many young people [...] What
I hope is that when people watch our show, they can see themselves somewhere."
"Funnys and feels, that's what we're known for."
For 11 years, the world watched Winter grow up on Modern Family. When the show ended,
she decided that it was the right time to tackle some completely new parts.
As she explained to The Hollywood Reporter in 2019,
"I'm excited to play new roles and to do things that challenge me a little more.
Alex is a great character, but Alex doesn't change a ton. I was a kid as Alex on the
show and now I'm an adult as Alex, so it's a little different than the roles I want to play.
I don’t want to play kid to adult. I want to just play my age now."
Winter achieved her dream of starring on a much more serious show when she appeared
on an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit in 2019,
though it was definitely a big challenge for her. As she explained to Entertainment Weekly,
"It really is completely different. Modern Family, I've been doing for 11 years,
and comedy is not simple, but I've been doing it for so long, it comes easier to me at the moment."
But even though the new experience wasn't too easy,
Winter still hoped for some more serious roles in the future. As she put it,
"I want to do something completely different from what I've always done.
And I think this was an amazing experience for me to start that."
During her time on Modern Family, it seemed like Ariel Winter had finally found her people. Even
off-screen, she was in a serious relationship with fellow actor Levi Meaden for three years, though
at the end of 2019, they opted to call it quits. But a new romantic spark soon arrived. That same
year, a source told Us Weekly that she was now an item with actor Luke Benward. In early 2020, the
two were spotted together for the first time at a Golden Globes afterparty. The new couple initially
kept their relationship private. As Winter explained to Entertainment Tonight back in 2018,
"Having every little aspect of your life in the public eye is
really hard because it leaves more room for criticism and I just want to live."
But eventually the world was able to get a peek,
as Benward slowly started appearing on Winter's Instagram account. By the end of 2020,
the two became Instagram official and even announced that they'd become business partners.
"You know, he's my best friend, he's my boyfriend, uh, so it's
really beautiful to be able to get to that place with somebody."
As an actor, Ariel Winter has a passion for telling stories, and she eventually decided
to tell them from behind the camera as well. While we'll still be seeing her on our screens,
she's also gotten into producing. In July 2020, it was announced that she would be starring in
and producing a feature film called Don't Log Off, which would be her first project
with her boyfriend Luke Benward. By the end of the year, the couple had wrapped
up producing another project together called Boys. As she gushed on Instagram,
"Can't wait to keep growing, building, creating and achieving together."
Winter has been through many eventful chapters in her life, but her end goal
is entirely different from what she's experienced so far. As she revealed to Elite Daily in 2020,
she'd like to open a rescue shelter for dogs. This is a subject that's near and dear to her heart,
as she has five dogs of her own, all of which she's adopted from shelters. While there are
shelters all over the world, Winter wants hers to be special. As she explained to Elite Daily,
"I don't want to make just a regular shelter. We have those [...] I want to make a really
nice center for these dogs because a lot of senior dogs die in the shelter. That breaks
my heart. I would like for a senior dog to live out the rest of its days happy."
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