Ed O’Neill Almost Joined the Mob Before Finding Fame on ‘Modern Family’: ‘I Was Broke’

Ed O’Neill earned millions of fans with his role as patriarch Jay Pritchett on Modern Family, but acting wasn’t always his first career choice.

“I had friends whose fathers were in organized crime,” Ed, 77, said during an appearance on Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s “Dinner’s on Me” podcast.

The Golden Globe nominee explained that he once had a friend who offered him a job in organized crime in the ‘60s.

“We’re driving, and he said, ‘How you doing? You got cut, you got no money,’” Ed continued. “I said, ‘No, I’m broke. I don’t know what I’m gonna do, Jim.’”

After visiting a bar, the Married … With Children alum was hit with an interesting business proposal.

“We left, and [Jim] said, ‘You can do this kind of stuff for me … I’ll protect you,'” he recalled. “‘I’ll give you easy stuff. Just you collect here. You do that. You run, you drop something off here and there. You may have to lean on a guy, but you’re good at that. You can make some good money.'”

Ed admitted that he decided to think about the offer as he waited for his acting career to take off. It was a conversation with his father that ultimately steered him toward Hollywood instead of another path.

“He said, ‘I saw you take a ride with Jimmy … I just wanna ask you a question: Can you do time?’ I said, ‘No,'” Ed reflected. “He said, ‘You couldn’t do time. You’d have a hard time being in jail, right?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t think I could do time.’ He said, ‘OK.'”

He continued, “I called Jimmy, and I thanked him and I said, ‘I’m going to New York. I’m gonna try this other thing.'”

Ed’s first acting role came in 1980’s Cruising, per IMDb. He has earned dozens more credits since then, including appearing in all 11 seasons of Modern Family from 2009 to 2020. Saying goodbye to the series was bittersweet for the star and his castmates.

“The last two weeks of shooting, there was a buildup of emotion and you could feel it all around you,” he told The Business Journal in March 2020. “It got inside of you. People were getting choked up and it built up to that last day. The last two days were long ones because the [whole cast] was together filming for 12-hour days, and it became very emotional.”