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Julie Bowen, 47, generally doesn’t share much about her personal life. She’s said a couple of times that it’s hard being a parent and she recently shaded moms who pretend on social media like their lives are perfect. She said in December that being a parent is “exhausting and every day I feel like I’m three steps forward and one step back.” Julie has three children with her husband of 13 years, real estate investor Scott Phillips, 44. Their kids are all boys, they have twins aged 8, John and Gustav, and a 10 year-old son, Oliver. Julie posts a lot of cute photos and videos of her sons but she hasn’t put up anything on Instagram or Twitter in weeks, nor has she posted much with her husband. (I think this snapchat-filtered video is him but it’s hard to tell.) There may be a reason for Julie’s silence on social media. People reports that she’s separated.
Modern Family star Julie Bowen and her husband, real estate investor Scott Phillips, are going their separate ways.
PEOPLE has confirmed that the couple, who married in September 2004, has separated after 13 years of marriage…
The pair most recently walked a red carpet together in September 2016 at the Los Angeles LGBT Center 47th Anniversary Gala Vanguard Awards in West Hollywood, and they were last photographed with their kids at a Harlem Globetrotters game in Los Angeles almost a year ago, in February 2017.
In 2016, Bowen, 47, explained why Phillips, 44, didn’t attend the Emmy Awards that year.
“We just had our anniversary on the day of the Emmys which was hilarious,” Bowen told PEOPLE at the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s Gala Vanguard awards. “He’s come every year, he’s been so supportive and this year he was playing in a tennis tournament and I wasn’t nominated as an individual so I said, ‘What do you want to do on our anniversary?’ I mean it’s such an honor to be nominated and to go, but it’s tough to be a purse holder.”
Of what makes a marriage successful, Bowen joked, “Honestly I only remember up until we had the kids. Then you’re like, ‘What?’ Twelve years. We’ve had children for nine. So I remember the first three years, the rest of it is like a blackout.”
I can’t help it, this makes me sad. I know that breakups can be for the best and when it’s a marriage they’re often a very long time coming, but still I’m sad. The gossip in me wonders if there’s more to this story though, like was there cheating by either party? Did they have major disagreements about how to raise their kids? We probably won’t hear much because it’s Julie Bowen, she’s not out there giving tell all interviews, using her marriage for publicity like Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard, or trying to be a social media influencer, she’s just doing her job. Maybe that’s why I care more, because she seems like a genuine person who just happens to be a celebrity.
photos credit: Getty and Instagram/Julie Bowen
Bloody hell! I hate it when long marriages end.
Maybe they can make it work 🙁
I love the t-shirts! I want one for me and one for my toddler.
This makes me sad. My current guy is also 3 years younger and i think it’s making a much bigger impact than I realized. Coming off a shaky patch with him
Hope it gets better for you. I just went through a break up, ex was two years younger and it did make an impact at this stage of our lives. After 5 years together I’m heartbroken.
Thanks so much, French in hk <3 <3 <3 hope it gets better for you too — sending you lots of love
This is sad. Show co-creator Steve Levitan went through a messy divorce recently. So that’s the second Modern Family split.
Personally, I hope this gets reflected in the the show with Phil and Gloria running away together. Those Pritchetts are pills.
This is sad to me too. 🙁 Even if ultimately for the best the break-up of a family is a difficult time for all involved.
I don’t think I’ve ever read about her personal life. That’s too bad. Their boys are adorable.
I’m sad for her and their whole family too. Hopefully it all goes as well as possible and everyone’s ok.
I think Modern Family has worn out its welcome, but I’ve always liked her as an actress.
This is sad. I really like her. She’s amusing, and much more of a realist than a lot of celebrities.
Hopefully it’ll be a relatively painless split (as much as it could ever be) and that they’ll be able to co-parent easily.
At the ages the kids are, there’s pros and cons. They’re not so old that they would know the full details on their parents relationship (hopefully) but they’re also not so little that they need that up all hours kind of care that an infant would need.
They are really sweet looking boys – and it seems like both parents care greatly about them which is a major benefit.
Egh, I think being open about stuff is a good thing. A lot of people admire extreme stoicism (and in some cases, yes, it works — life isn’t black and white), but maybe we’d all be a lot better off if we DID share more. We’d probably plow wider inroads when it comes to solving societal problems if we expanded our conversations beyond polite banter, and actually started talking more…even about “personal issues”; it’s humanizing, and, in a way, reminds us that we’re all suffering through the quotidian pain of being human.
Then again, we’d also have to get a lot better of being able to handle the thoughts and opinions of people who disagree with us — which, frankly, is becoming a lost art. We live in the age of the filter bubble, and our tolerance for opposing views is nearing nill.
This is all to say, Julie Bowen’s taciturn approach has never done it for me.
“It’s tough to be a purse holder”
Well, maybe for a partner who is jealous and doesn’t support their partners success? That one sentence tells me a lot.
I wish the best for Julie, she seems like a lovely woman and was instrumental in helping both her tv daughters heal and find their best life. I hope she finds hers, too.
It struck me too. When I was a companion to professional events, I loved it…supporting my partner, giving him a plus one who knew how to be pleasant in his world, a chance to meet the people he worked with snd talked about, and a few hours of not having to mind my own ambitions.
Body language. When he is in front she is hugging him with her free arm. When she is in front his hand is limp not even on her shoulder. He looks like a pouting a$$hat.
I’m okay if they’re okay.
They’re separated for a reason and it’s not as if happy marriages end in divorce.
My parents divorced when I was 10 and it was a relief- their tension and toxicity were palpable and I couldn’t for the life of me understand what made them drag it out for as long as they had (after 25 turbulent years).