Sarah Hyland

She'd been a working child actress for years when Modern Family landed in 2009. Her first screen credit was Private Parts in 1997, playing Howard Stern's daughter. Modern Family flipped her casting type entirely. Before Haley Dunphy, she was getting the crying-unpopular-girl parts. The show had her playing the pretty, popular one for eleven seasons, and the ABC ensemble won four SAG Awards along the way. She didn't just survive the role, she defined the oldest Dunphy kid so thoroughly that it's hard to imagine anyone else in it.

The health story is what the public knows about her now beyond the sitcom. She was born with kidney dysplasia, received a kidney from her father in 2012, and watched it fail in 2017. Her brother Ian donated the replacement. That's two transplants, 16 surgeries total, and a 2018 interview where she disclosed she'd contemplated suicide during the worst of it. She stayed on Modern Family through all of it. Post-show, she hosted Love Island USA on Peacock and joined The Great Gatsby on Broadway as Daisy in 2025. The sitcom kid growing into stage work is either a real pivot or still a career in progress.

She spent the Modern Family years playing someone who never seemed to struggle for anything while privately managing a body that had been failing her since birth. She's described not remembering some episodes because kidney failure left her so exhausted she'd fall asleep between takes. The contradiction became its own story, and she's spoken publicly about organ donation and kidney disease awareness since her second transplant. Off-set, she married Bachelor in Paradise bartender Wells Adams in August 2022 at a California vineyard, with half the Modern Family cast on the guest list.