Ariel Winter Reveals Why She Really Moved Away From Los Angeles

Find out what drove Modern Family actress Ariel Winter to leave Los Angeles after living in the area her entire life.

By Corinne Heller May 12, 2022 4:14 PMTags
Watch: Ariel Winter's Exclusive Diet, Hair & Blowout Secrets

When it came to living in Los Angeles, she was the Ariel Winter of discontent.

The actress best known for playing Alex Dunphy on Modern Family recently sold her L.A.-area home for almost $4 million and moved with her boyfriend out of her native California to a new (undisclosed) state, seeking a more private and "normal" life."

"Part of the reason I always hated L.A. was because I have been followed by paparazzi for a very long portion of my life," Winter, 24, said on the actress' Quitter's Podcast, co-hosted by her Modern Family mom Julie Bowen, "and I really, really dislike having my space invaded."

Winter continued, "I don't like pictures of me when I haven't signed up for pictures of me. I don't like feeling watched. I've always just wanted to live a very, very normal life, just have a normal existence. and I never really felt like I could do that in LA."

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Modern Family Cast Then and Now

Winter added that "fame has never been something that I have any interest in," saying, "I just wanted to live as normal a life as I could."

"I want to have privacy and I've never really had privacy," she continued, "to just live my life, to live my existence."

Amanda Edwards/Getty Images

Winter said that people had always suggested she should leave L.A., but that she had never considered it. "I've never lived anywhere else," she said. "I'm from L.A. I just don't know what would I do. And then I just randomly looked and decided, why not? And so, I decided within a week and a half to move."

She continued, "We sold our cars, got an Escalade to fit all the dogs for the drive, I put my house on the market, sold my house. We just went back and got the rest of our stuff."

Her new life, she said, is "so exciting and so awesome, and so relaxing." She added, "The conversations are different. Everything's different."

Winter is still working as an actress. She is set to appear in the upcoming thriller Don't Log Off, the NBC comedy series Hungry with Valerie Bertinelli and the film Crimelands.

"I got a job in L.A. as soon as I moved here," Winter said on the Quitters Podcast. "I went back, but it didn't change my mind. I'll have to get an apartment in L.A. and I'll just go back and forth for my job."

Despite the move, Winter is not calling her new residence her forever home, saying "I had to remind myself that if I don't like it somewhere, I can leave."

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