Eric Stonestreet: Tina Fey has always been awesome

Eric Stonestreet found watching Tina Fey "valuable training" for his career in comedy.

The American actor is best known for playing Cameron Tucker on award-winning TV series Modern Family, which has also made household names out of his co-stars including onscreen partner Jesse Tyler Ferguson.

Eric began his journey down the funny path at The Second City, an improv comedy enterprise, and had the cream of the crop as his leader.

"Well at Second City, I don't know if you've ever heard of her, a girl named Tina Fey was my level teacher. Heard she's gone onto some good stuff!" Eric grinned to talk show host Seth Meyers. "[She was] awesome, awesome. And as you know everyone loved her then - I was a host at Second City meetings, I sat people, not that I actually had words to say. I got to see that show every night, that was such great valuable training to watch [comedienne] Rachel Dratch and Tina Fey..."

Since landing his role on the small screen hit Eric has been nominated for countless awards, and has two best supporting actor Emmys under his belt.

He's also been invited to plenty of big events, one of which was held at the home of the President of the United States, Barack Obama, in 2011. When his tour of the White House was cancelled that day Eric was baffled about why, but soon found out the groundbreaking reason.

"So tour's cancelled, we go out for the day, we go back to the hotel, we're having a cocktail at the bar - BREAKING NEWS, Osama bin Laden killed. I'm like, that's why our tour was cancelled!" he recalled. "Which is a cool story in itself, but then six months later when they're doing an interview of the de-construction of that night, Bill Daley's (Chief of Staff to the president at the time) interviewed and he's like, 'Yeah I'm sitting at the Correspondents dinner with some guy from Family Guy...'"