One Modern Family Star Admits Why He Almost Joined The Mafia And What Stopped Him

While Ed O'Neill has played his share of police officers over the years, the "Modern Family" star has admitted to nearly assuming a real-life persona that would have placed him on the opposite side of the law. In an interview on former "Modern Family" co-star Jesse Tyler Ferguson's "Dinner's on Me" podcast (via Page Six), O'Neill — a former college football defensive lineman at Ohio's Youngstown State — said he was broke after being cut by the Pittsburgh Steelers during training camp in 1969. 

O'Neill told Ferguson that after his bid to make the Steelers fell short, he got desperate and turned to a Youngstown pal named Jim, who offered him a life in organized crime. "[Jim] called me and said 'Hey take a ride with me. I want to talk to you,'" O'Neill told Ferguson. "We're driving and he said, 'How you doing? You know, you, you got cut, you got no money.' I said, 'No, I'm broke ... I don't know what I'm going to do.'"

O'Neill said Jim then took him to an upscale restaurant, after which he offered him a chance to make some money, albeit illegally. "We left and he said, 'You can do this kind of stuff for me, you know, I'll protect you, I'll give you easy stuff. Just you collect here. You do that. You run, you drop something off here and there. You know, you may have to lean on a guy. You're good at that. You can make some good money,'" O'Neill recalled.

While Ed O'Neill's buddy, Jim, presented him with a tempting offer, fate intervened and the future actor ultimately rejected it. "I said, 'Let me think about it, Jim. Cause I'm, I don't know. I might be leaving town to pursue this acting thing,'" O'Neill told Jesse Tyler Ferguson.

Later that day, O'Neill said a conversation with his father convinced him to stay on the path of the straight and narrow. "He said, 'I saw you take a ride with Jimmy ... I just want to ask you a question. Can you do time?'" the actor told Ferguson, adding that he answered his father with "No."

Ironically, O'Neill's first screen credit was for playing a cop, Detective Schreiber, in the 1980 Al Pacino crime drama "Cruising." O'Neill, of course, eventually went on to star in "Married ... with Children" as well as "Modern Family," where he played Jay Pritchett, the father to Ferguson's Mitchell Pritchett. O'Neill played the role for the series' entire 11-season duration, from 2009 to 2020, and earned three Emmy nominations for best supporting actor in a comedy series. Meanwhile, if he had taken his friend Jim's offer, the only thing he might be eligible for today is parole.