Burrell says he’s menacing only onscreen

By LUAINE LEE

PASADENA, Calif. — Actor Ty Burrell usually plays the menacing bad guy, threatening the good folk with all kinds of devious ploys. But in a coup of reverse casting, Burrell reigns benign as the wanna-be “cool” dad in ABC’s hilarious new comedy “Modern Family.”

“I played a lot of villains in film, and my features lend themselves toward that, so I got turned down for a lot of leading-man parts for me being menacing looking,” he says in a quiet meeting room at a hotel here, not looking particularly menacing.

“If you knew me, I’m the biggest wimp that ever lived,” he laughs.

“I played an evil corporal in ‘Evolution,’ a true jerk in the remake of ‘Dawn of the Dead,’ a really mean boss in ‘In Good Company’ and an extremely sleazy anchorman in a movie coming out next spring called ‘Morning Glory.’”

Revenge is wreaked on him in “Morning Glory.” He gets fired. “I always play the mean guy who gets fired,” says Burrell, 42, who admits he’s been fired himself, but not for any of the above transgressions.

“I was fired from a table-waiting job. I was so bad at my job and the bosses were so nice. There was a time when I couldn’t cover for somebody else’s shift. And I think it dawned on them: ‘If he can’t even cover somebody else’s shift, why are we keeping him? And he’s a horrible waiter.’ They were like, ‘Well, we’ll let you know when you’re on the schedule again.’ It was the beginning of a lot of rejection.”

Rejection comes with the territory of acting. “Even to this day, I don’t think I’m a quote-unquote confident actor,” he says. “And I’ve been trying to get laughs since I was 3. I am a needy extrovert. That’s the formula to one type of comic actor.”

“I remember being at a dinner party with my parents and a bunch of friends. I was 4. My aunt was talking about being in a toilet stall next to somebody who kept pulling and pulling the toilet paper, and I said, ‘Well, maybe there was a prize at the end of it.’ The table laughed, and I feel like that is still the moment I’ve been chasing desperately my whole life. It was like a love-bath.”

Fans may remember his slender face and dark, black hair from sitcoms “Out of Practice” and “Back to You,” which he did most recently with Kelsey Grammer, or as Doc Samson in “The Incredible Hulk.”

“I’ve enjoyed all kinds of acting in my adult life. I got started late. At the heart of the silliness of this character is the reason I ever got into acting in the first place. I ended up doing a lot of drama early on. Most of my parts were very dramatic parts. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy them, but since I started comedy, I’ve just felt more at home. I will continue to enjoy doing dramatic stuff, but I get so much joy out of this work that doesn’t need to be over thought. It’s like playing baseball or gardening — whatever you do naturally.”

Doing things naturally is really Burrell’s way. A year ago he and his wife, Holly, moved to Utah. “Because she has family there and so we just really enjoyed being outside and bike rides, fishing, gardening. So far it’s been OK for the career; it just means more of an effort. Still working out the kinks.”

About Holly, he says, “She’s just an unconditional love machine, so it’s been an incredible and an ongoing lesson. She’d never admit to it. She was an actress when we met, but she’s a pastry chef. It’s a stream of bowls and spatulas for me to clean off with my mouth.”

He and Holly are starting a family, and family has been critical in Burrell’s life. Losing his dad, a social worker, when Burrell was 21 changed him. “He never saw me act,” he says softly.

“It’s funny how those things are, how a crisis can also be an opportunity. I think I was a little bit off-track. It was the worst time of my life, but it churned things up, and out of that fertile soil, I figured out some ideas about what I wanted to do with my life.”

Before he started acting, he says, he was doing absolutely nothing. “I was totally rudderless. And it’s funny because I had dropped out of school and was basically on my way to becoming an expert Slurpie-puller at the 7-Eleven, and that’s when my dad got sick. And then when my dad passed away, two months after he passed away, I walked into a graduate acting Shakespeare class, and by the end of the day, I’d changed my major.”