Tyler Gerald "Ty" Burrell (born August 22, 1967) is an American actor who is known for his role as Phil Dunphy in the ABC comedy Modern Family, for which he has won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 2011 and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series for 2013.Burrell was born in Grants Pass in southern Oregon, the son of Sheri (nee Hauck), a housewife, and Gary Burrell, a family therapist， His ancestry includes English, German, and smaller amounts of Scottish, Irish, and French; also, one of his four times great-grandmothers was a slave from Madagascar，Burrell grew up in the small southern Oregon town of Applegate, near the California border, where his family ran a business， He attended Hidden Valley High School in Grants Pass, where he played football and was a lineman for the Hidden Valley Mustangs. After graduating from high school, he enrolled at Southern Oregon University in Ashland， and graduated with a bachelor's degree in theatre arts in 1993，Burrell was the commencement speaker at the school in 2008， While in college he worked as a bartender at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival，During this time, Burrell also attended the University of Oregon and became a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity. Burrell continued his education at the Penn State University, where he earned an MFA，In 1999, Burrell worked as a festival actor at the Utah Shakespeare Festival， Burrell has also stated that for a period of time in graduate school, he lived out of his van to save money.