When 38-year-old Frankie Muniz says he never drank or did drugs, people react in two ways.
“Everyone was either shocked… appalled that I wasn't drinking, or they were like, 'Wow, that's so strong of you,'” the “Malcolm in the Middle” star said in a recent episode of the Mayim Bialik Podcast. Collapse”. “It's so strange that people react so strongly to me not drinking. Who cares, right?”
It turns out a lot of people care, because the actor's admission of lifelong sobriety has caught the attention of dozens of news outlets (including this publication), and the brief exchange with Bialik from an hour-long, 20-minute podcast Interview picked up.
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This isn't the first time Muniz has shared that he doesn't drink. In 2012 and 2013, after two small strokes landed him in the hospital, he dispelled any rumors that it was related to drug use. “I have never smoked a cigarette,” he said at the time. And now, a decade later, Muniz is aware that his lifelong sobriety conflicts with people's ideas about how former child actors should behave.
Near the end of the most recent interview, Bialik, a former child actress herself, asked Muniz, who was 13 when his Fox sitcom first aired in 2000, whether he had ever been to therapy or dealt with the effects of his childhood fame.
Although he admitted to never going to therapy (something he hopes to change soon), Muniz said he dealt with the pressures of Hollywood by simply stepping away. In 2008, a few years after “Malcolm in the Middle” ended, he moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, where he still lives with his wife Paige and their child and runs an olive oil business.
“Moving to Scottsdale in 2008 saved my life, in my opinion,” he said, “And … I'm 38, I've never had a sip of alcohol, I've never done drugs, I've never done that.” anything – so I don't mean in the sense of, “Oh, I'm going to go crazy like so many child actors do.”
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Muniz says his lifestyle has allowed him to “have a great appreciation for his past” and focus on other activities such as music and racing cars.
When Bialik elaborated on why Muniz never drank or did drugs, he said: “I don't have a reason – it wasn't like a religion,” he said. He added that his family often drinks recreationally and his parents often smoke marijuana (although he admitted that the Copaganda reality show “Cops” made him believe that the only people who smoke weed are “criminals.” ).
Instead, Muniz said his sobriety may have been due to his “hatred of time.” He mentioned that as a child actor, “when I was 15, 16 years old, I felt like I was that old…Compared to most 15 or 16-year-olds, I had experienced a lot in my life.” As his colleagues in As clubs began offering him drinks and drugs, he felt neither the need nor the desire to try it out.
“I felt like I had been without it for so long that even though I was only 17 or 18, I thought I wouldn't start now,” Muniz said.
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Over the past decade, Muniz has continued to work as an actress, but has mostly booked smaller one-off roles on TV shows, smaller indie projects or occasional cameo appearances, such as the AMC thriller series “Preacher.” Instead, he focuses on his other ventures, such as professional racing. After competing in a number of celebrity races throughout his career, Muniz began racing full-time in the ARCA Series, one of the lower tiers of NASCAR's feeder system. His goal is to reach the Cup Series.
Muniz said later in the podcast that he was excited about the possibility of a reboot of “Malcolm in the Middle.” Brian Cranston, who played Hal, the father of Muniz's title character, has been working on a script with several writers.
“I would love it,” said Muniz, who watched the show through to the end for the first time in 2014, nearly a decade after it ended. “I actually have a greater appreciation for what the show is and was and would love to reconnect with all of those people.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.