‘Modern Family’ Star Julie Bowen Opens up About Sarah Hyland’s Health Struggles: ‘She’s a Little Rock Star’

Julie Bowen is sending love to her on-screen daughter.

The Modern Family star opened up about how impressed she is at her co-star Sarah Hyland as she continues to battle her ongoing health problems.

“She’s a little rock star,” Bowen told Entertainment Tonight of Hyland, who has endometriosis and recently received a second kidney transplant. “What her body has gone through… if you’ve ever met her, I mean. I’m not big, and she next to me is a little slip of a thing. I don’t even know how many surgeries she has been though. And she’s a tough little cookie.”

“I know she’s a survivor and she’s a lovely person as well,” Bowen continued. “I’m very proud of her. I’m proud of all my real and fake children. I really am. They’ve all turned out really well.”

Hyland made headlines in early December when she revealed that she underwent a second kidney transplant in September 2017 after her body rejected her first transplant.

“What most people don’t know is that about two years ago exactly I went into rejection,” she told Self Magazine. “We did all of these tests and all of these treatments to try and save the kidney. Christmas break, New Year’s, Thanksgiving, my birthday — all of that spent in the hospital.”

The second kidney came from her 23-year-old brother, Ian, though the actress said that she fell into a depression, blaming herself for the first transplant going wrong.

“I was very depressed,” she said. “When a family member gives you a second chance at life, and it fails, it almost feels like it’s your fault. It’s not. But it does. For a long time, I was contemplating suicide, because I didn’t want to fail my little brother like I failed my dad.”

Hyland credited her boyfriend, Bachelor star Wells Adams, for being her rock as she recovered from the second surgery.

“He’s seen me at my worst,” she said of Wells. “He was texting me in the morning before I went into surgery, and we were FaceTiming the entire time I was in the hospital. I think that’s why I feel the most beautiful in his eyes, because he still finds me beautiful after seeing all that. It was a really intimate start to a relationship to have to go through those hurdles at the very, very, very beginning when you’re just even getting to know a person.”

The Modern Family star, whose character Haley Dunphy recently revealed to be pregnant, is now stable.

“I’m thriving. I’m super happy with life,” Hyland added.