‘Modern Family’ Star Ed O’Neill Says He Almost Joined the Mob Before Making It in Hollywood

If it wasn’t for his father, Ed O’Neill might have lived a completely different life. The Modern Family star has been acting since the ’80s, with memorable roles in , Dragnet, Finding Dory, Wreck-It Ralph, Little Giants, and more. Even though it’s worked out pretty well for him, he wasn’t always going to be an actor. Via EW, O’Neill appeared on Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s Dinner’s on Me podcast, where he revealed that before pursuing acting, he almost went into organized crime.

He was cut by the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1969 and was looking for a job in his hometown of Youngstown, Ohio. His childhood friend Jim took him out for a drive, as O’Neill recalled, “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. You know, I don’t know what I’m going to do.’” The two stopped at a bar, and Jim “started talking to the bartender.”

“He says, ‘I’m looking for this kid, his name is whatever, Demko, his name is Jimmy Demko, do you know him?’ And the guy says, ‘No, it doesn’t ring a bell,’” O’Neill continued. “So he gives him 20, and he says, ‘Look, he’s an old friend of mine, I haven’t seen him in years, you know, I’m looking to reconnect, but I’d like to surprise him. So if he comes in again, this is my, you can call this number. You can reach me.’”

“We left, and he said, ‘You can do this kind of stuff for me, you know, I’ll protect you,’” the actor explained. “‘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… 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.’”

Luckily, Ed O’Neill did think about it, and he wasn’t alone in the thought process. He talked to his father about the proposition, and he apparently knew a lot about Jim’s shady dealings. “He said,’ I saw you take a ride with Jimmy… I just want to ask you a question. Can you do time?’” O’Neill had said “No” to the question, to which is father responded, “‘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, ‘Okay.’”

O’Neill turned down the offer, moved to New York, and eventually became a successful actor on both the big and small screens, with one of his biggest roles in the following years being Married… with Children, which ran for 11 seasons until Fox canceled it. That decision to not go into a shady business and instead pursue a career in acting was probably the best decision he ever had. It sounds like it wasn’t all him, though, as his dad seems to have had a hand in it as well. It’s definitely a good thing, as no one could have played Al Bundy or Jay Pritchett better.