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Levi Meaden on ‘Trying to Navigate’ Fame and Keeping a ‘Private Life’ with Girlfriend Ariel Winter

The actor and longtime boyfriend of Modern Family’s Ariel Winter stars in the new home-invasion thriller alongside Gabrielle Union — and he says he’s taking his heightened fame “one step at a time.”

“I still am trying to navigate it,” Meaden, 30, tells PEOPLE. “I try to keep relatively the same. I’ve always kind of been a homebody so that’s still the same. I just go out and come back home with my girlfriend and three dogs and chill out. I try to make sure I don’t change too much because I like that. This is what I do for a job, but the home and family is where the actual life is, so I try to keep that in mind.”

For Meaden, having Winter, 20, in the business has “certainly” helped when it comes to making career-related decisions.

“We can ask each other to weigh in,” Meaden says about Winter, with whom he has lived with since first sparking dating rumors in November 2016. “We also try to, in our private life, keep it separate from the industry and try to keep it grounded and normal and about us.”

Plus, he always has a partner to run lines with.

“It helps when it’s somebody else who is in the industry,” he says. “It helps when you get a role and run it past each other and see what they think and read the script and try things. It’s really helpful.”