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PHOTOGRAPH BY TK; ILLUSTRATION BY TK Queen MOTHER TIMING, EMMY-WINNING ACTRESS JULIE BOWEN HAS BECOME THE OFFICIAL MOM OF AMERICA. BY TRACEY NEITHERCOTT PHOTOGRAPHY BY DARREN TIESTE J Giselle dress, Dior ($11,500). Copley Place, 617-927-7577; dior.com. Shoes, Casadei ($1,950). casadei.com ulie Bowen tears through her Los Angeles home, flinging her heels off as she rushes through the door. It is 5:37 PM, a full seven minutes after our interview was supposed to start. She is hardly late, but still apologizes at least three times for the delay. As we chat the Brown University graduate settles in with her kids, just awake from their naps, to play Legos. In moments like this, it's easy to see the similarities between Bowen, 42, and Claire Dunphy, the belea- guered mother of three she plays on ABC's Modern Family. Like Claire, Bowen is smart and witty, thrives in chaos, and is candid about motherhood. When her children were younger, she lamented having three kids in two years (she has a 5-year-old son, Oliver, and twin 3-year-old boys, Gus and John, with husband Scott Phillips) on late-night talk shows. "I did not always enjoy it," she says of those first few years. All of that changed as the kids grew, and she's happier now, however chaotic caring for a brood of growing boys has made her life. And it is chaotic. "Most of the time they're outside playing in the pool and swimming and running around," she says. "We're hyperactive around here." The operative word being "we." After filming on Modern Family wrapped for the season in late March, Bowen went on a self-imposed hiatus that consisted of spending time with her family. "The boys are finally at an age where I find them to be so luscious and fantastic that I don't want to be away if I don't have to be. We all love each other," she says. "And at least two or three times a week they wish I would just jump off a cliff, and sometimes the feeling is mutual." NEW ENGLAND BOUND That Bowen places such importance on family isn't hard to believe when you consider her childhood: loving parents, two close sisters, safe neighborhood. She grew up just outside of Baltimore, where her parents still live, hamming it up with her sisters in backyard productions. At 14, she followed her older sister, Molly, to St. George's School, an idyllic boarding school campus set among the Gilded Age mansions that dot the landscape of Newport, Rhode Island. "Talk BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM 97 WITH A QUICK WIT AND IMPECCABLE COMEDIC