I am very lucky that I came from a stable home, but I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life until acting sorted of landed in my lap when I was in my 20s. Acting, to me, was a bit like the ladder I used to climb out of feeling lost.
— Ty Burrell
Our house was a place where you were welcome to make an idiot out of yourself. Silliness was valued. My dad worked with foster kids in the foster care system, and I think silliness was a way for him to leaven things up.
The world can make an actor feel overly important. What I do isn't hard work. It's not ditch digging - which I have done, for one summer. Of course there are times when your fuel tank's low, but even on the hardest days, you are on a film set. You are doing something creative.
There's no private side to acting, which some people find hard. I've drawn inspiration from athletes. They manage to be themselves under the pressure of public scrutiny, and they have it much harder - they have to perform with people yelling at them.
I can't grow a beard.
Comedy can be fun no matter what you're playing. It always has the potential to be a blast.
I was a bouncer for, like, three months in Boston until everybody figured out that I should never be a bouncer. I'm so soft. I just have no aggression in me.
I'm not very romantic. My idea of romance is more practical - like washing the car.
I spent most of my formative years in rural Oregon.
I didn't know that there was such a thing as butter carving. But then, I poked around a little bit. A quick Google search will show you 55,000 images of butter carvings, and they're extraordinary.
I've played a lot of really smarmy people in film, and it can be real fun, don't get me wrong. But it can be characters I'm not as excited to explore.
My younger brother and I have been writing together, mainly for fun, for years, but we've been improvising together since we were kids. Literally.
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.
I grew up on 'Monty Python.'
When you get on a comedy show, people assume you're a comedian. I'd say I'm more of a comedy nerd.
I'm glad I had to wait until my 40s for success. I was not a mature young man and would probably have gone off the rails.
I'm not taciturn and stoic.
My dad was a fiercely funny guy, and he and his brother would get on runs. So my younger brother and I were basically mimicking them when we started goofing off.
People discuss parenting the way they talk about denominations of faith.
Once you do a show like 'Modern Family,' which has been an amazing thing, and I'm so happy about it, it does make it a little challenging to do other things.
I'm an obsessive sports fan, which my wife is incredibly patient about.
And I watch 'Saturday Night Live' religiously, I have since I was a little boy. I watch it basically like one of my favorite sports teams.
There's lots of problem solving in any marriage, but when you have this collective goal that is a human being, it's an inspiring rally point.
I just like comedy in general. My film work, which has been at times more dramatic, has been satisfying. But I never feel quite as good and as light and blissful as when I'm doing comedy.
A lot of modern comedies are difficult to watch too, because they're so ironic and so detached and so quote-unquote clever. They kind of keep you at arm's length. They can be really funny, but they're not really nourishing.
I don't know why, but it seems to be a common story for actors and comedians to have a tendency to be bad students and have difficulty focusing on things.
I'm prone to hyperbole.
My favourite game is wiffle ball, a fake version of baseball with a plastic ball and bat that's really for kids.
I'm not handy.
There's nobody in my family that's in performance or in the business in any way, so it was not something that was encouraged as a profession. It was more just encouraged as a personality trait.
It's kind of a crazy thing with kid actors because a lot of them get hired without people really knowing if they're good or not. They get hired for the way they look at a really young age. You also have your fingers crossed around kid actors... because the lessons they learn on set aren't always the best. You can really get whatever you want.
My wife has taught me about unconditional love. When there's a conflict, there's never a thought that we won't work it out.
After my father passed away in 1989, I fell pretty hard for theater as an undergraduate at the University of Oregon. Before he died, he planted the seed that maybe I should look into performing.
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.
My wife handles all of our technology. So if something goes wrong with the computer, I throw up my arms and step aside while the IT gal figures it out.
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.
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.
