Ed O'Neill Didn't Recognize Taylor Swift When He Met Her at Sarah Hyland's Birthday

Ed O’Neill’s hilarious celebrity stories keep coming.

The Modern Family actor, who stars as family patriarch Jay Pritchett on the ABC comedy, admitted Thursday on The Ellen DeGeneres Show that he didn’t recognize Taylor Swift when he met the Grammy winner at costar Sarah Hyland’s backyard birthday party.

“I went to Sarah Hyland’s birthday party and this beautiful young woman came up to me,” O’Neill, 71, recalled. “When I go to these things, I don’t look at people closely. It’s a bit overwhelming if there’s a lot of people there you don’t know, some celebrities. And so this woman came up to me and said, ‘Hi again. Nice to meet you.’ ”

O’Neill remembered knowing that she was famous, but he couldn’t place who she was. ” ‘You want a selfie? Let’s do a selfie,’ ” Swift, 28, asked an unknowing O’Neill.

After the duo took the snap, O’Neill texted his daughter, Sophia, and asked her who the woman was. “I said, ‘I desperately need to know a name so that when I leave and say the name: ‘Wonderful to meet you,’ ” he recalled texting his daughter.

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Although O’Neill didn’t recognize Swift, the audience roared with laughter when they immediately realized he was posing with the “Look What You Made Me Do” singer as their selfie appeared on the screen.

“I’m having you committed,” O’Neill’s daughter jokingly texted him when she saw the photo via text.

Even DeGeneres was surprised at O’Neill. “You really didn’t recognize Taylor Swift?” she asked.

“No, no,” O’Neil asserted. “Again, I only see them when they’re performing. So when you see them in a backyard, I thought it’s a pretty girl. … Again, I’m getting old.”

But he played it off. “I did say, ‘Nice to meet you, Taylor,’ when I left the party,” he said with a smile.

While O’Neill’s Swift story may come as a surprise to some, this isn’t the first time that O’Neill hasn’t recognized a pop singer who has asked for a photo with the actor.

In spring 2015, Britney Spears asked O’Neill for a picture when she saw him waiting in the airport.

“‘Could you please … and I know you’re in a hurry…’” O’Neill told DeGeneres in June 2016 of Spears’ fan-girl photo request.

“So I said, ‘Sure, fine, you know, okay.’ So she sat there, and we took it, and I said, ‘Have a nice trip. I’m going,’” and I left. So the next day, my manager texts me and goes, ‘What is this? 53,000 likes. It’s Britney Spears.’”

“I mean, look at my face: Do I look like I’m sitting with Britney Spears?” O’Neill joked. “You know, my daughter, Sophia, she said, ‘You are a moron.’ ”