Late last week, 17-year-old Ariel Winter became officially emancipated. This news arrived over two years after Ariel was removed from her mother’s care after very serious abuse allegations. Ariel’s older, Shanelle Gray, sister assumed temporary guardianship, and the Modern Family cast and crew all pitched in to help take care of Ariel. Now Ariel is free, and she’s making big plans. She’s preparing to graduate high school and is already looking at colleges. Ariel’s even thinking about aiming for law school:
Ariel Winter’s recent emancipation isn’t the only big legal plan she’s had brewing.
The 17-year-old Modern Family star tells me that she plans to become a lawyer.
She graduates from high school next year and she’s already looking at colleges.
“I toured around schools in California and I’m going to take a tour of East Coast schools,” Winter said last night at the TV Academy screening of Modern Family’s season finale.
She’s most interested in business and law. “I would love to continue acting but it’s definitely important, I think, to go and do something else as well,” Winter explained. “You never know if something’s not going to work out, if one day acting is like, ‘No, we don’t like you anymore!’ You gotta have something else you can do. I’ve always been interested in law so I think it’ll definitely be something that I’ll love to do and also go to school for.”
[From E! Online]
Ariel’s young, and there’s plenty of time to decide on a career. I think she might be interested in law because she watched some behind-the-scenes workings of her emancipation. Once she gets to college, she’ll probably change her major a few times (like many students do). Experience tells me that a business education is far more practical than a law degree. No disrespect to any of the happy lawyers out there, but career dissatisfaction runs rampant in the field. People usually think legal work is more exciting than it really is. Don’t do it, Ariel! (She’ll be fine. She’s a strong girl.)
Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet & WENN
Dissatisfaction with the profession is largely due to not making as much money as people think we do. Like in the general population, only about 10% of lawyers make big money. Ariel won’t have that issue and can work purely for the love of it. I wish her well.
I think a bigger contributing factor in job dissatisfaction is the constant stress. Also, I feel law school does absolutely nothing to prepare you for the actual practice of law or teaching you how to cope with the stress that entails. I do agree the financial aspect compounds that stress, which is probably worse for the younger generation of lawyers, as employment rates post-law school have dropped drastically since 2005. When I graduated 98% of the graduating class was employed prior to graduation. The following year, it was less than 50%.
Another factor that builds upon your point is so many people really have no idea what they want to do after college, so they just decide to go to law school. It’s not their dream. It’s not their passion. They just don’t know what else to do. So then they rack up more debt and get stuck working a job they hate afterward just to pay it off.
Don’t forget about those fancy tv shows, L.A. Law, The Practice, Good Wife, Suits, Scandal!, even The West Wing, all of which make law degrees look glamorous and contribute significantly to the unrealistic notions that many people who enter into the field tend to bring with them.
As much as I loved him, I blame Andy Griffith. Damn you, Matlock!!
She seems very wise and down to earth. Even if someone is the best at something, it’s good to have a “plan B” career.
If she has a passion for it, I hope she goes for it. I think it’s great she’s planning on college, and knows that experiencing new things is important.
It’s nice that she’s realistic about her acting career.
Not that you shouldn’t follow your dreams but it’s always good to have a backup plan
She’s been through a lot, and she sounds like a smart, grounded young woman. Join the dark side and be an engineer, Ariel! We have cookies!
The engineering field really needs more women too!
As a non-engineer, I agree whole-heartedly
Love MF. Love her as Alex (the whole cast is awesome, really). She seems like a sweet girl with a good head on her shoulders. So glad she was able to get away from an abusive environment and wind up surrounded by loving & caring people. I wish her all the best.
I don’t know much about her, but I’m happy to see her away from her abusive situation, and admire her for being so thoughtful and planning for her future.
+1
She’s also the voice of Sofia the First, a Disney cartoon series that also has movies (my niece loves Sofia!). She has pretty great singing voice and could have a long career in voiceovers, especially at Disney.
Yes, she’s a shining example for sure… one of very few child stars who stayed level-headed and went down all the right roads. And I’m sure it’s no coincidence that she’s also one of very few child stars who cut ties with her toxic mother.
I’m remembering Minnie Driver’s comments about kid stars and their parents… I think she’s right. If I was ever in a position to make a film or TV show, I wouldn’t employ kids or animals. Not because they’re famously difficult to work with, though… because they often don’t have a say in the way they’re being used and trained and influenced.
I’m SO glad Ariel takes after Alex Dunphy! And a commenter yesterday was right… she’s totally the anti-Kylie Jenner. If Kylie had kept her original face and rejected her toxic parents too, she could be Ariel’s twin.
I actually think there are many child stars that have grown up fine and fairly well adjusted…Christina Ricci, Ryan Gosling, Jason Bateman, the Harry Potter kids, the Fanning sisters and the Game of Thrones kids (so far).
It’s only the headline generators like Macauly, Britney, Lindsay, Bieber and the Disney kids that give child stars a bad name. I think there’s a difference between parents who allow their kids to pursue a hobby and the parents who push and exploit their kids for fame.
With the residuals she will have coming in she could do some of the lower paying child advocate work and still live in luxury. That could actually be great, I hope she does.
She sounds really levelheaded and well-adjusted. Good for her. Other young actresses (Natalie Portman and Emma Watson come to mind) have managed to balance acting with college.
Good on her, especially given how young she is and her abusive background! That takes a lot of guts to do what she did.
Good for her. She certainly doesn’t have to worry about money. I like her…she seems level headed and down to earth. Lord knows, she’s been through a lot for her young age.
I know you’re just giving casual advice (and Ariel probably has plenty of money anyway, as Mirn said)… but I couldn’t ignore the “get a more practical degree”/”she’ll probably change her degree anyway” thing. Especially coming from a fellow writer!
Becaaaaause… writing is the only profession that has ever interested me (my earliest memories involve bookstores and libraries). However, throughout my entire childhood and adolescence, people told me how impractical it would be to major in creative writing, how few writers actually support themselves with writing alone, how I would obviously change my mind eventually, how I had no idea what I “really” wanted to do at the age of 4 or 10 or 16, how I needed a back-up plan, etc.
I didn’t listen. Language is still the love of my life, and I was determined to stay on that path, so I did. I got a corporate creative writing job immediately after getting my BA in creative writing… and I left three years later to become a self-employed freelancer. This isn’t me bragging, I swear! I just try to explain this every time I hear someone recommend a “back-up plan” to a young person with a longtime interest that fuels their career dreams. I’m not earning nearly as much as money as my peers who went onto med school or got a business degree… but I wake up every morning and I get paid to do my favorite thing in the world. The value of that can’t be measured in dollars.
Ariel’s obviously not me… but if you’re reading this and you’re making college plans and you have an “impractical” dream, pleeeease believe in yourself. You’re lucky to know what you want.
/soapbox rant over.
Good for you! That was a truly inspiring story and all the unhappy losers of the world that tell 10 and 16 year olds what to do with their lives seriously need to STFU.
Also, let’s get real people: business degrees are handed out like candy and more people are graduating with law degrees than the market has a need for. Wake up, it’s not 1945, and no, having one of the two most overawarded degrees in America doesn’t make you special, nor does it guarantee you a boatload of cash and personal satisfaction.
Cheers for being vocal (not braggy) about sticking with your passion and making it happen! Having a passion and going for it is more likely to lead to you being *useful* in the world. Can’t we encourage people to purse their true talents so that they can spend their lives “joyfully contributing” rather than being “practical” (miserable drones)?
Stay on that soapbox. I gladly hand you a megaphone.
Thank you so much for that. I study Literature, Linguistics and Gender Studies and hear BS like “well, what ARE you doing with it?” all the damn time. You know what? I already did the management thing for a year and was terribly unhappy. Im not going to spend five valuable years of my life doing sth I don’t like just to be, as Mumzy said, “practical”. I fucking love it and I don’t care where I end up. Humanities rule!!
It must say is this one makes me me cry with joy for Ariel. I am so proud of her and I wished he well on her future endeavors. I know what it is like to be abused by a family member. I was emotinal abused by my Aunt when I was 17 years old, now I am am 31. SOBS.
Anyways, congratulations Ariel and I hope th best for you.
Her mother..oooh, I wish for Zeus’s thunderbolts sometimes! Good luck Ariel.
WHAT?!?! I love this actress! I didn’t know any of this! WHat happened to her?!?!? What was the mother accused of?!?!? That’s awful. So glad she is out and that she clearly has a supportive older sibling and friends to lean on.
As a fairly content attorney (I’d like lots more money and shorter hours), I see that many people who go into the law do so because they seek an element of control they cannot get outside of themselves, so I can see why she’d be interested, especially having gone through the legal process of emancipation. But kaiser is right, kids change their minds a lot in college years. I just hope she feels happy secure and safe in her life now.
poor kid.