Sofia Vergara Shares Epic Throwback From When She Was an ’80s Swimsuit Model

America’s Got Talent judge Sofia Vergara loves turning heads with her Throwback Thursday posts, and this week’s photo was no different. The Modern Family star shared a striking photo from her days as a swimsuit model in Colombia on Thursday. Vergara shared the photo a little over a week after Modern Family wrapped on April 8 with its 250th episode.

Vergara, 47, published a photo of herself in a one-piece yellow swimsuit Thursday, quickly earning more than 336,000 likes from fans. “TBT The 80’s Colombia,” Vergara simply wrote in the caption, adding two heart emojis. On Tuesday, she shared a video of herself from the 1990s, hosting a television show while wearing a string bikini.

It took Vergara almost two decades of hard work in the entertainment world before she earned her breakout role as Gloria Delgado-Pritchett on Modern Family in 2009. As a teenager, she appeared in a Latin American Pepsi commercial. This led to her hosting a TV show, and by 1999, she was racking up small parts in Hollywood shows like Baywatch and My Wife and Kids. In 2007, she landed a lead role in the short-lived ABC show The Knights of Prosperity and a recurring part on Dirty Sexy Money, which really put her on the road to Modern Family. During the show’s run, she became the highest-paid actress on TV.

“I was a TV host in a Latin network, and from there, I learned that women were very attracted to whatever I was doing,” Vergara explained in a 2015 interview with The Independent. “They were not afraid to ask me: What colour is your hair? What lipstick are you wearing? They were always very interested and I thought, there’s something here. And, with my manager’s plan, I have always done these businesses, but I would have never done it so well if I hadn’t have been lucky to get a role like Modern Family that made me so popular and a household name.”

Modern Family earned Vergara four Emmy nominations and a role in a beloved TV series that will continue to live on in reruns. “I’ve never expected that I was going to be a part of something this good and special. I complain all the time, ‘I don’t understand, why can’t they write like Law & Order? Why can’t we go forever like Law & Order? I don’t understand it. Why? Why do we have to end?’” Vergara said in the retrospective special Modern Family: A Modern Farewell.

Vergara’s name recognition made her a great choice to join the America’s Got Talent judges table for the NBC show’s upcoming season. Unfortunately, filming on the new season has been put on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic. Co-star Heidi Klum was ill during the show’s last week of filming, so Vergara’s Modern Family co-star Eric Stonestreet filled in.