Tragic Details About Modern Family Star Ariel Winter

Many actors get their big break after toiling away in the entertainment industry for years, just for the hope of landing a sizable role somewhere. But Ariel Winter got her big break early on with a little show called "Modern Family." Winter plays Alex Dunphy, the nerdy middle child within the Dunphy clan. She's academically gifted but often gets stressed out, especially around her frequently embarrassing family, and things only grow more stressful as she enters puberty and finds her place in the world.

Alex often clashes with her older sister, Haley (Sarah Hyland), who cares more about social status than grades. But Winter views Alex as an inspiration to young people to invest in their education and to believe they can go as far as they want in life. It's great that Winter can find a positive message out of such a silly sitcom, especially with everything she went through early in life. 

Winter has spoken about how it was a joy to work on "Modern Family" for so long. It doesn't sound like there were many horror stories from the set, but she did contend with numerous issues in her personal life. 

It's not easy being a child actor. The entertainment industry is rough on anyone, regardless of age, with long days and constant rejection. Some young actors transition into successful careers in adulthood, and there are a ton of child stars who simply wound up with normal jobs as grown-ups. Still, there's no shortage of child actor horror stories, and it sounds like Ariel Winter didn't exactly want to pursue acting on her own. 

Winter appeared on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" and opened up about how it was her mother's idea to get her into acting: "My mother put me in the industry when I was 4 years old. And I think when you're 4 years old, you don't really know anything that you want to do. You want to be everything." She continued that she, of course, enjoys acting and wants to keep doing it, but her initial foray into the industry wasn't by choice. 

Winter saw success at a young age. She got small roles in the Shane Black film "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" as well as "Monk" and "Bones." Plenty of child stars can balance acting work with normal kid activities, but Winter wasn't granted that grace. She's discussed how her mother, Crystal Workman, didn't want her making friends at a young age because other girls were her competition. In interviews, Workman was described as a quintessential stage mom and became a source of much disdain later in Winter's life. 

Before she was even a teenager, Ariel Winter landed the role of a lifetime with Alex Dunphy on "Modern Family." On the series, she's a kid who's very aware that the people around her are too dumb for their own good. But even though the extended family may have disagreements and issues over the course of a given episode, it's abundantly clear they all still love each other. Alex has a supporting network, and it's a shame Winter didn't have the same in her real life.

When Winter was 14 years old, she was removed from the custody of her parents via the Department of Child and Family Protective Services. She's never gone into details about what her mother specifically did to her, but she has accused Crystal Workman of abuse (something Workman has denied). Years after all of this transpired, she told People, "It's a really deep, painful, sore, sore part for me that's so much deeper and bigger than I've ever felt ready to talk about." At the time, Winter was placed in the custody of her older sister, Shanelle Gray.

Winter hasn't said anything about how the alleged abuse manifested, but others who worked on "Modern Family" could tell something was off. Sharon Sacks, Winter's on-set teacher, told The Hollywood Reporter she noticed signs of sleep deprivation in Winter as well as hunger: "I would order a couple lunches in my name so Ariel could eat one of them. I could tell she was hungry. Boiled chicken and cucumbers isn't going to do it for a growing kid."

The transformation of Ariel Winter from "Modern Family" to now is truly astonishing, particularly because she went from a little kid to a grown woman in charge of her own career. But there were growing pains in more ways than one. The first episode of "Modern Family" aired when Winter was only 11 years old, so general audiences were introduced when she was still a little kid. But as the show went on, Winter experienced puberty, and suddenly, the internet became a cesspool of people who saw fit to comment on a young girl's body.

Winter later told People, "It was just everywhere. It was every headline I read about myself, like, grown people writing articles about me saying how I looked terrible or pregnant or like a fat sl*t. I mean, I was 14. It totally damaged my self-esteem." She continued how a lot of attention went toward her weight, especially after she gained 30 pounds on an antidepressant. Even when she lost the weight, people then commented on how she was too skinny.

Winter would lash out at body shamers on social media, but that only fueled the fire further. There's no winning as a woman in Hollywood, as almost everyone wants to take jabs at women for merely existing. But enduring all that as a teenager, still coming to terms with a changing body, was especially tough on Winter: "I understood what it was like to be hated. No matter what I was going through, I was a target. It made it very difficult to look at myself in the mirror and go, 'I love this version of me.'"

Growing up as a young actor on a major network show is tough on anyone, but in addition to enduring cyberbullying, Ariel Winter also had men sexually harassing her online. She revealed to The Daily Mail, "I am familiar with male predators because I worked in Hollywood at a young age. I don't wanna say too much about it, but by the time I was on a laptop and cell phone, I was getting inappropriate messages from older men, and it caused trauma."

The experiences got so bad that Winter eventually had to attend therapy to deal with it. Tragically, Winter's trauma growing up in the spotlight in the digital age is nothing unique. Jenna Ortega has also spoken out about receiving inappropriate messages from grown men when she was still a teenager. But now, Winter is doing something to protect young girls from having to go through what she did. 

As an adult, Winter has collaborated with the nonprofit organization, Safe from Online Sex Abuse. They work alongside law enforcement to perform sting operations to catch wannabe child predators. SOSA has a YouTube series showing what they do, and Winter appears in an episode, posing as a 12-year-old girl to lure traffickers into a sting. It's a dark reality, but SOSA and volunteers like Winter have undoubtedly helped many young girls avoid horrific fates. 

If you or someone you know may be the victim of child abuse, please contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453) or contact their live chat services.

As mentioned previously, Ariel Winter has a frosty relationship with her mother, who forced her to pursue acting at a young age and allegedly abused her by controlling her outfits and what she ate. While she went into her sister's custody at the age of 14, she formally became emancipated before she was 18. On May 15, 2015, Winter took to Twitter (now X) to proclaim, "I am now officially emancipated!!! I'm really lucky I have an amazing support system and lovely people in my life who have given me the support and guidance to have been given this wonderful opportunity."

During Winter's previously mentioned appearance on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," she explained what emancipation entailed. She was now her own official legal entity who could handle her own business affairs and be in charge of her own well-being. Her mother, Crystal Workman, also did interviews around this time and routinely denied the allegations leveled against her. 

While Winter continued acting on "Modern Family" and other projects following the emancipation, she also began taking classes at UCLA. Instead of taking acting or film classes, Winter was interested in law and social justice; however, she wound up taking an indefinite hiatus from school due to scheduling. Winter's saga with her mother has become one of the biggest child star controversies in TV history, but luckily, she was able to get out of what sounds like a terrible situation. 

Ariel Winter going through puberty and dealing with all the bodily changes that accompany it made her a target for online bullies. It also drew unwanted attention, as Winter developed size F breasts during her tenure on "Modern Family," which garnered even more attention. For Winter, it was tough to have online commentators make such a big deal out of her breasts, as she told Glamour, "Every article that has to do with me on a red carpet always had to do with 'Ariel Winter's Crazy Cleavage!' Or 'Ariel Winter Shows Huge Boobs at an Event!' That's all people would recognize me by, not, 'Oh, she does great work on 'Modern Family.'"

With excessively large breasts, Winter had trouble finding clothing that fit right and also experienced significant physical pain. She admitted, "I really couldn't stand up straight for a long period of time. It started to hurt so bad that I couldn't take the pain. My neck was hurting so bad, and I actually had some problems with my spine." However, Winter has a family history of women with large breasts, and several members had undergone breast reduction surgery in the past. After so much inconvenience, she decided it was the right move for her, too. 

She went from a size 32F to 34D, and it sounds like Winter is thrilled with the decision to go through with the reduction. And she hoped that speaking out publicly about getting surgery might encourage other women to seek it out if they're going through something similar. 

At the beginning of 2020, much of the world was dealing with COVID-19 lockdowns and worrying about whether they would end up hospitalized for it. But Ariel Winter had to be rushed to the hospital for a very different reason — cutting off the tip of her thumb while trying to slice a tomato.

Winter revealed all to Access Hollywood, including showing off her then-bandaged appendage. "I had chopped four onions just before I chopped this one thing," Winter stated. "Chopped four onions and it was great — I just got new knives, too. So I went to chop a peeled tomato and sliced the top part of my thumb off on a peeled tomato." She actually sliced open an artery, and her boyfriend, Luke Benward, drove her to the hospital and made sure to remember to bring the missing piece of thumb. 

Winter recalled how a nurse gave her the thumb piece in a plastic bag, and she didn't recognize what it was at first. So she simply threw it away. Luckily, they were able to dig it out of the trash later.

While no doubt a scary incident, it sounds like everything worked out for Winter in the end. "I sliced my thumb off and it's sad. I'll have a mildly sad-looking thumb, but it'll be okay," Winter concluded. Compared to other freak accidents that nearly killed actors off set, this is a pretty mild story by comparison. 

"Modern Family" ended in 2020 after 11 seasons. At that point, Ariel Winter had spent half of her life on the series, and she was understandably sad that this chapter was coming to an end. Despite growing up around a lot of turmoil and controversy, it sounds as though "Modern Family" was a major saving grace. She spoke about as much on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," "It's not something that we want. We love each other. We love our show. Obviously, we would love to make many more seasons, but it's been 11 years, and I think everyone is ready to do new things." 

Winter has done many new things since "Modern Family" ended. She's gotten into a lot of voiceover work on cartoons like "Star Trek: Lower Decks" and "Sofia the First: Royal Magic." She's also appeared in small films like "Pools," so while she hasn't stepped away entirely from the limelight, she has slowed down a bit. That's probably partly due to the fact that she moved away from Los Angeles with her boyfriend, which was all part of putting an unpleasant past behind her.

"[Los Angeles] holds some not-great memories for me," she told People. "And I'm young and never lived anywhere else and thought, 'Why not?' If you're no longer on a network show that shoots there, you don't really have to be there, and if I do get a show that shoots there, I can always go back." Winter moved to Tennessee, so after much of her young life was dictated by someone else, she's now calling the shots and living life on her own terms.