Frances Burrell: Growing Up in a Family Built by Choice

Table of Contents

Quick Bio

Detail	Info
Full Name	Frances Burrell
Born	2010 (exact date not publicly disclosed)
Nationality	American
Known For	Eldest adopted daughter of actor Ty Burrell and his wife Holly Burrell
Father	Tyler Gerald “Ty” Burrell — actor, best known as Phil Dunphy on Modern Family
Mother	Holly Burrell (née Brown) — culinary artist, former actress
Sibling	Greta Burrell — younger adopted sister (adopted 2012)
Adopted	2010
Current Residence	Salt Lake City, Utah
Age (as of 2025)	Approximately 15 years old
Public Profile	Kept deliberately private by her parents

A Child Whose Story Begins with a Deliberate Act of Love

Not every biography begins with the subject’s own choices. Some begin with the choices of people who loved them before they could choose anything themselves.

Frances Burrell’s story starts exactly that way. In 2010, before the world knew much about her name or her face, two people decided that they wanted to be parents — and that the road to parenthood they were choosing was adoption. Those two people were Ty Burrell, then riding the early wave of his breakthrough as one of television’s most beloved comic performers, and his wife Holly, a culinary artist and former theater actress who had been his partner for a decade already.

The moment Frances came into their lives, something shifted. Not just for them — for the way people understood the Burrell family at all. They weren’t the loud, flashy Hollywood couple building a brand. They were quiet people who wanted a daughter and went and got one.

Frances’s biography is, necessarily, told through that context. She is fifteen years old as of this writing. Her parents have protected her privacy with remarkable consistency. What we know of her life comes almost entirely from what Ty and Holly have chosen to share. And what they’ve shared paints a picture not of celebrity excess but of something simpler and, frankly, more interesting: a family that made itself on purpose.

The Parents Who Built the Home She Was Born Into

To understand Frances Burrell, you need to understand the two people who became her mother and father — because the household she grew up in was shaped entirely by who they are.

Ty Burrell was born Tyler Gerald Burrell on August 22, 1967, in Grants Pass, Oregon. He was not handed anything. He grew up in small-town southern Oregon, studied theater at Southern Oregon University, earned an MFA at Penn State, and spent years doing exactly what struggling actors do: living cheaply, working hard, collecting rejection slips. At one point during graduate school, he lived out of his van for four months. He bartended at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival to pay his way. His father died of cancer, and Ty channeled his grief into his work.

He was in his forties before most people had ever heard his name.

Holly Brown grew up in Davis County, Utah, a quiet part of the state well north of Salt Lake City. She loved theater enough to leave Utah for Washington D.C. and work at the Shakespeare Theatre Company there. That’s where she met Ty, in the late 1990s, when both of them were cast as understudies in a production of Twelfth Night. They fell for each other quickly — Ty has said he knew she was the one from their very first date.

They married on August 18, 2000. Not in Hollywood. Not with a magazine deal. Quietly, on their own terms.

For the first decade of their marriage, children didn’t come easily. Holly pursued culinary training, eventually studying at the French Culinary Institute and building a professional identity as a chef and culinary artist. Ty built his career methodically, doing Broadway, Off-Broadway, small film and television roles, grinding away at the craft for years before landing the role that would change everything.

That role was Phil Dunphy on Modern Family, which premiered in 2009. And when the show took off, the Burrells were suddenly very much in the public eye — a position neither of them had actively sought and both of them handled carefully.

In 2010, a year after the show launched, Ty and Holly announced that they had adopted a baby girl. Her name was Frances.

2010: Frances Arrives

The announcement was brief and warm. It was confirmed by Ty’s representative, and it was announced simultaneously that the family had welcomed their daughter. No photo-spread deal. No magazine exclusive. No carefully coordinated reveal timed to maximize coverage. Just: we have a daughter, her name is Frances, we’re thrilled.

Ty was 42 at the time. Holly was in her mid-thirties. They had been married for a decade, and this was the beginning of a new chapter for both of them.

The timing of Frances’s arrival meant she came into a household in the middle of an extraordinary moment. Modern Family was not yet the phenomenon it would become, but it was already clear that the show had struck something real with audiences. Ty was winning awards. The family was living in Los Angeles, where he needed to be for production. And yet — the Burrells already had a home in Salt Lake City. They had owned property there since 2008. Holly’s roots were in Utah, and some of Ty’s family had migrated there too. Even at the height of his Hollywood success, the Burrells always had one foot planted somewhere calmer.

Frances grew up in that dual world — Los Angeles during production years, Utah as a second home, eventually as the primary one.

A Younger Sister Arrives: Greta

Two years after Frances joined the family, in 2012, Ty and Holly adopted again. Their second daughter, Greta, arrived when Frances was roughly two years old.

This time, the announcement came through People magazine — a slightly more formal announcement, but still light on details, still focused on the family’s joy rather than on media access.

The two girls grew up together. Frances as the older sister by two years, Greta as the one who arrived into a household that had already been shaped by Frances’s presence. They shared parents who were publicly notable but privately grounded. They shared a home that moved between the glitter of Southern California and the mountains of Utah.

Whatever their individual personalities look like — and Ty and Holly haven’t shared much, respecting their daughters’ right to grow up without being defined for them — they grew up as sisters, which is itself one of the most formative relationships a person can have.

The Modern Family Years: A Famous Dad, A Protected Life

For eleven seasons, from 2009 to 2020, Ty Burrell was one of the most recognized faces on American television. Phil Dunphy became a cultural fixture — the good-hearted, slightly ridiculous, deeply loving father who tried too hard and loved too much. Ty won two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for the role, and five Screen Actors Guild nominations. The show itself won 22 Emmy Awards over its run.

Through all of that, Frances and Greta rarely appeared publicly. Ty and Holly spoke about their daughters in interviews with warmth and affection — Ty has called fatherhood one of the great transformations of his life — but they didn’t put the girls on red carpets or trade on their image.

This was a choice, and a deliberate one. Ty has spoken openly about wanting to give his daughters a childhood that belongs to them, not to his career. The famous-parent trap is real: children of celebrities who grow up performing their own existence for public consumption don’t always come out the other side intact. The Burrells watched that happen to other families in their world and chose differently.

What Frances’s childhood with a famous father looked like on the inside — what she understood about her dad’s job, what it was like to watch him on television or see his face on billboards, how she processed being the daughter of Phil Dunphy — none of that is publicly known. But whatever the texture of those years, they were not exposed years. They were private ones.

Moving to Utah: A Family Decision, Not a Career One

When Modern Family ended in 2020, after 11 seasons, Ty Burrell did something that surprised quite a few people. He left Los Angeles. He and Holly packed up their life in Southern California and moved to Salt Lake City full-time.

Frances was around ten years old. Greta was around eight. The girls finished out their school year and then the family relocated to Utah entirely.

Holly’s roots there made it feel like home. Ty’s extended family had been filtering into Utah over the years too — some of them run Bar X, the Beer Bar, and The Eating Establishment, restaurants in Salt Lake City and Park City that Ty has a stake in. What had started as a second home gradually became the only home.

Ty has described the move as one of the best decisions the family has ever made. In multiple interviews — with People, the Salt Lake Tribune, KSL News, and others — he has spoken about Utah as the right place to raise children. The outdoor culture, the mountains, the hiking, the relative distance from the pressures of Hollywood. He admitted, with characteristic self-deprecating humor, that when they first arrived he felt like they were doing outdoorsy cosplay — “pretending to be people who hiked,” essentially. But the lifestyle took hold genuinely.

Frances and Greta grew up into teenagers in that environment. Salt Lake City rather than Los Angeles. Mountains rather than soundstages. A father who, for the first time in eleven years, wasn’t on a production schedule every week.

What Frances Is Like, As Far as We Know

The honest truth is: not much is publicly known about Frances Burrell’s personality, interests, or individual character. She is fifteen. Her parents have protected her privacy well. There are no verified interviews with her, no confirmed social media accounts, no documented school achievements that have made the news.

What we know, through the filter of her parents, is that Ty and Holly describe their family life with evident joy and authenticity. Ty has called raising Frances and Greta the most meaningful work of his life — more meaningful, even, than the Emmy-winning television career. He has spoken about wanting to be present for the years that pass fastest. About not taking the school pickups and the homework and the dinner conversations for granted.

Frances is, by all available evidence, a teenager growing up in Salt Lake City with two parents who love her, a younger sister who is her closest companion, and a father who could probably have stayed in Hollywood pursuing whatever came next after Modern Family but chose, instead, to come home.

Hardships: What We Know and What We Can Reasonably Infer

There are things about Frances’s story that are both real and undiscussed. Adoption, even the most loving and well-supported adoption, involves early experiences of loss and transition. Every child who is adopted comes from somewhere before their adoptive family. The circumstances of Frances’s birth and early days are not public, and they shouldn’t be — they belong to her, when and if she ever chooses to share them.

What we can say is that Ty and Holly Burrell have consistently emphasized in their public remarks that adoption is not second-best, not a consolation, not plan B. It was the choice. It was the life they wanted to build. That framing matters, because children absorb the meaning adults attach to their stories.

Growing up with a famous father also has its own particular textures. The recognition in public. The questions at school. The awareness that your dad is Phil Dunphy to millions of people. None of that is catastrophic, but it is different, and navigating it requires a kind of grace that the Burrells seem to have tried to cultivate at home.

Net Worth and Financial Life

Frances is a child, so speaking about her personal net worth would be absurd. What matters in terms of financial context is that she has grown up in a household of genuine material comfort. Ty Burrell’s success on Modern Family over eleven seasons placed him among the better-compensated actors in television during that era. The family owns restaurant interests in Utah. Holly has built her own professional culinary identity.

Frances and Greta are not growing up in wealth-obsessed or celebrity-preoccupied ways, based on everything her parents have said. The move to Utah was explicitly framed as a move away from that energy. A deliberate trade of Hollywood infrastructure for hiking trails and family dinners.

Whatever Frances eventually builds in her own adult life, she starts from a position of security and relative advantage — educational, financial, and emotional.

Where Frances Is Now

As of 2025, Frances Burrell is approximately fifteen years old and living in Salt Lake City, Utah, with her parents and younger sister Greta. She is, by all accounts, a teenager doing what teenagers do: going to school, navigating the particular turbulence of adolescence, and growing up in a home where both parents are present, engaged, and clearly committed to the idea that their daughters’ lives come first.

Ty, though not currently acting on screen, has returned to performing through a scripted podcast called The Good Life, which is loosely based on his own childhood. He has said he is “itching” to get back to screen work eventually, but that for now, the outdoorsy Utah life and the ability to be home suits him and his family well.

Frances’s future is entirely open. That’s the point of being fifteen.

Final Words

Frances Burrell’s story is, at this stage of her life, primarily the story of the family that chose her and the environment they created for her to grow up in. That story has real substance. Two theater-trained artists who built a twenty-five-year marriage, pursued careers with patient dedication rather than overnight ambition, and then decided the way they wanted to become parents was through adoption — twice. Who then, at the peak of professional success, walked away from the industry’s center to raise their daughters somewhere quieter and more grounded.

Frances will write the rest of her own story in her own time. What she does with her father’s name, whether she ever steps into public life or chooses the private path her parents have modeled, what she builds and loves and becomes — none of that has been decided yet.

For now, she is a teenager in Salt Lake City, growing up in a household built entirely on purpose. And that is actually quite a lovely place to start.

FAQs

1. Who is Frances Burrell?

Frances Burrell is the elder adopted daughter of American actor Ty Burrell — best known as Phil Dunphy on Modern Family — and his wife Holly Burrell, a culinary artist and former actress. She was adopted in 2010 and lives with her family in Salt Lake City, Utah.

2. When was Frances Burrell born?

Frances’s exact birthdate has not been made public by her parents. She was adopted in 2010, and as of 2025 is approximately 15 years old. The Burrells have kept specific birth details private to protect their daughter.

3. Is Frances Burrell Ty Burrell’s biological daughter?

No. Ty and Holly Burrell adopted Frances in 2010. Two years later, in 2012, they adopted their second daughter, Greta. Both girls joined the family through adoption, a path the Burrells chose deliberately and have spoken about with great openness and warmth.

4. Who is Frances Burrell’s mother?

Her mother is Holly Burrell, born Holly Anne Brown, a native of Davis County, Utah. Holly graduated from the University of Utah with a theater degree and later trained at the French Culinary Institute. She and Ty met at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C. in the late 1990s and married on August 18, 2000.

5. Who is Frances Burrell’s sister?

Her younger sister is Greta Burrell, who was adopted by Ty and Holly in 2012, when Frances was approximately two years old. The two girls have grown up together and remain close.

6. What is known about Frances Burrell’s childhood?

She spent her early years in Los Angeles while Ty was filming Modern Family, with regular time in Salt Lake City, where the family had maintained a home since 2008. In 2020, after Modern Family concluded its eleven-season run, the family moved to Utah full-time. She is currently growing up in Salt Lake City.

7. Why did the Burrell family move from Los Angeles to Utah?

When Modern Family ended in 2020, Ty and Holly made a planned decision to relocate full-time to Salt Lake City. Holly is a Utah native, some of Ty’s family had also moved there, and the Burrells had maintained a second home in Utah since 2008. Ty has repeatedly said the move has been “spectacular” and that Utah is a wonderful place to raise their daughters — offering mountains, outdoor activities, and a quieter pace of life than Hollywood.

8. What does Ty Burrell say about being Frances’s father?

Ty Burrell has consistently described parenthood as one of the most transformative and meaningful parts of his life. He has spoken about wanting to be fully present for his daughters during the years that pass most quickly, and credited fatherhood — along with his marriage to Holly — as his most important work.

9. Has Frances Burrell appeared publicly alongside her father?

Very rarely. There are a small number of candid photographs where Frances appears with Ty and Holly at public events, but the Burrells have consistently kept their daughters out of the spotlight. Frances has not done interviews, does not have a known public social media presence, and has not been featured in any promotional capacity.

10. What is Ty Burrell’s net worth and how does it relate to Frances’s upbringing?

Ty Burrell built substantial wealth through his eleven-year run on Modern Family and various film roles including The Incredible Hulk, Muppets Most Wanted, and Finding Dory. He and Holly also co-own restaurant establishments in Utah. Frances has grown up in a household of genuine financial security, though her parents have emphasized creating a grounded rather than extravagant family life.

11. What is Frances Burrell doing now?

As of 2025, Frances is approximately fifteen years old and attending school in Salt Lake City, Utah, where she lives with her parents and sister. Her daily life is kept private, consistent with how her parents have always handled media access to their children’s lives.

12. Will Frances Burrell ever enter public life?

That is entirely her own decision to make when she is old enough to make it. Her parents have deliberately avoided making that decision for her. Whether she follows any aspect of her father’s entertainment career, or her mother’s culinary path, or charts something completely different — she will have the space and support to find out.