Movies

Tyler Gerald Burrell (born August 22, 1967) is an American actor. Burrell is best known for his role as Phil Dunphy on the ABC sitcom Modern Family, for which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 2011 and 2014 (from eight consecutive nominations) and five Screen Actors Guild Awards: one for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series in 2013 and four consecutive awards for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series, shared with the cast from 2011 to 2014.

Burrell has had several roles in Broadway shows such as Macbeth and off-Broadway plays such as Burn This. He also had starring roles on the television series Out of Practice and Back to You. He has appeared in films such as Evolution, Black Hawk Down, Dawn of the Dead, Muppets Most Wanted, and as Doc Samson in The Incredible Hulk. He has also voiced characters in the animated films Mr. Peabody & Sherman, Finding Dory, and Storks.

Early life
Tyler Gerald Burrell was born in Grants Pass, Oregon, on August 22, 1967, the son of teacher Sheri Rose (née Hauck) and family therapist Gary Gerald Burrell (1940–1989). He has a younger brother, Duncan. He is mostly of English and German descent, though he discovered via Finding Your Roots that he is also of African descent through his four times great-grandmother, a formerly enslaved girl from Tennessee who became a homesteader in Oregon. He grew up in Applegate, Oregon, near the California border. He attended Hidden Valley High School in Grants Pass, where he played football and was a lineman for the Hidden Valley Mustangs.

While attending college at the University of Oregon, Burrell became a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity and worked as a bartender at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He later attended Southern Oregon University in Ashland, graduating with a bachelor's degree in theatre arts in 1993. (Fifteen years later, in 2008, he was the school's commencement speaker.)

Continuing his education at Penn State University, he earned an MFA and was a member of the Theatre 100 Company along with Keegan-Michael Key. In 1999, Burrell worked as a festival actor at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. He has also stated that for a period of time in graduate school, he lived out of his van to save money.