Ty Burrell

Ty Burrell
Tyler Gerald "Ty" Burrellis an American actor and comedian. Burrell is best known for his role as Phil Dunphy in the ABC sitcom Modern Family, for which he has won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 2011 and 2014 and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series in 2013...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Actor
Date of Birth22 August 1967
CityGrants Pass, OR
CountryUnited States of America
I think there are pluses and minuses to being simpleminded. The minus is not having any sort of vision for the future. But on the plus side, my wife and I have really been happy through all of the ups and downs.
I'm not a technical person, at all, but you get a little bit more of a sense for how to get something done a little bit more efficiently. I think everybody is in that place where it's a little bit more efficient, but the process is still the same, which is still loose and collaborative.
I don't believe, in a show like ours, that you really want to see character growth. That's just my opinion. Maybe to a small degree, but nothing serious. To that end, it doesn't have the same importance that it would have, if you were on an hour-long show. I think an audience gets really hungry for a character to grow and change on an hour-long show, and I think I would be more antsy.
I'm not saying this just to be self-deprecating, but I have always taken delight in playing people who are oblivious, because I do think I have giant, giant blind spots. It's a very comfortable place to be.
I think once I fail enough as a dad, I'll be looking for help wherever I can get it. I just need enough time to screw things up and then I'll start looking to TV dads for advice.
You know, I used to think I was a foodie, and then my wife went to culinary school and basically explained to me that I was just a guy that likes to eat.
Everything I do from now on, I'll have a mustache. I can promise you that. I don't care who I have to convince. If you see me with a mustache in a movie or on stage in the future, you'll know that I pitched the idea.
The truth is I've just never had any kind of plan at all for my career, which is probably not a very flattering thing to admit. I don't know that I'd ever planned to be in this situation. I'm still just an idiot, really really stupid. It's not like I'm now a genius because this has happened. I just got hugely lucky.
When you don't have crazy ambitions, you're always happy just kind of getting by. Our expectations were always kept low. And so I feel like we appreciate it all the more to have all this good fortune come our way, which we hadn't really been planning.
I got a little bit of a sense for the subculture, which is the equivalent of any subculture, really. The stakes are high, even if you live in a small town. It's like the annual bass fishing contests, or whatever it is. The stakes are always absurdly high, and this is no different. The competition at this butter carving things, from what I understand, is not that far off from what we're depicting in the movie.
Well, that's the great thing about indie film, in general. If it's not subject to the constraints of too much pressure from the studio or marketing, and all of that, you get to actually present fuller characters and you get to have the dark side of the characters. That's usually what gets cut out.
Working with an incredibly strong script is the thing that gives you the most confidence. If you go into an episode knowing the script is strong, I just feel like that's where it all starts. All collaborations that happen, in addition to that, are just bonuses, at that point.
It's the opposite on a sitcom. People crave the character to not learn from their mistakes. They want to just see the situation, and then see how that character is going to react to that particular chaotic catastrophe. That's just my take on it, anyway. I don't really get too hung up on what the future of the show is.
My father passed away before he saw me perform. I can't help but wonder what he would think of all this. I go to a job in full makeup.