‘Modern Family’ Star and Boyfriend Break up After Nearly 6 Years Together

Ariel Winter and her boyfriend are calling it quits.

The Modern Family actress quietly quit from her boyfriend Luke Benward in August 2025, PEOPLE reports. The couple had been dating for nearly six years.

“They just realized after almost six years that they were better as friends,” a source told the magazine. Winter reportedly still thinks Benward is “the best” and “there’s tons of love still there between them.”

“They are still best friends and share the pups, so everything is really good.”

Winter and Benward were last seen together in July 2025 at a screening of Don’t Log Off, the thriller film they starred in and produced together that was filmed at the height of COVID.

She told PEOPLE at the time that they “work really well together, because he’s a lot more on the creative side than me.” She said, “I just think he’s great, in general. I’m a stan. I’m a stan for my man!”

She said in March 2025 that she was leaving Los Angeles after years of public scrutiny following her start as a child star in the Modern Family spotlight. She specifically cited criticism surrounding her body image and looks.

“It was just everywhere,” she said of the constant noise. “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,” she told PEOPLE at the time. “It totally damaged my self-esteem.”

“I understood what it was like to be hated,” she says. “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.’”