Modern Family actor Ariel Winter is opening up about her decision to ditch Los Angeles after enduring severe childhood trauma.
Winter, 27, best known for her role as Alex Dunphy on the ABC sitcom that ran for 11 years, spoke about the downside of being a child star and being body-shamed about her weight.
“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 slut. I mean, I was 14. It totally damaged my self-esteem,” she told People of her treatment by the press.
Winter, who was born and raised in Los Angeles, started appearing on screen from the age of four. She was 11 when Modern Family first premiered in 2009.
“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,’” she said.
On top of the negative press about her appearance, Winter said her rocky relationship with her mom, Chrisoula Workman, was also the talk of the town.
Winter has accused her mom of abuse, which Workman has publicly denied.
According to the actor, she was removed from her childhood home by the Department of Child and Family Protective Services during her stint on Modern Family. She was legally emancipated at age 17, three years after being placed in the care of her older sister, Shanelle Gray.
In April 2020, when Modern Family finally wrapped, Winter said she and her boyfriend, actor Luke Benward, made the decision to leave Los Angeles behind.
“I didn’t leave the industry,” she explained, noting her acting career isn’t over yet. “I just left the city of L.A.
“It holds some not-great memories for me, 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 get a network show, I can easily go back,” she said.
After moving out of the city, Winter started a cooking series on TikTok and produced a few of her own small film projects.
However, she has yet to return to the big screen. She also told People about her work with an organization called Safe From Online Sex Abuse (SOSA), which lures sexual predators into meetings with local law enforcement.
“It just impacted me so deeply because I’d been that kid who’d been preyed upon online so many times,” Winter, who referred to herself as “a victim of grooming online and IRL [in real life] and CSA [child sex abuse]” in an Instagram comment earlier this year, said.
Winter previously opened up about her departure from Los Angeles in 2022 during an appearance on the Quitters podcast hosted by her Modern Family co-star Julie Bowen.
“Part of the reason I always hated L.A. is because I have been followed by paparazzi for a very long portion of my life. And I really, really dislike having my space invaded,” she said. “I don’t like pictures of me when I haven’t signed up for pictures of me. I don’t like feeling watched.
“I’ve always just wanted to live a very, very normal life, just have a normal existence,” she continued.
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