Frankie Muniz

Frankie Muniz, the young sensation on the sitcom "Malcolm in the Middle" (Sundays, 7-7:30 p.m., Fox) is finally discovering what it`s like to be getting old. He is one of three leading contenders for the title role in the big-screen adaptation of J.K. Rowling`s "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer`s Stone."

In the book, Harry Potter is 11 years old. In real life, the youthful actor is 14, though conveniently short and skinny for his age at 4-foot-7 and 70 pounds with rocks in his pockets. Given Muniz`s advanced years, it is believed that 12-year-old Haley Joel Osment ("The Sixth Sense") and 10-year-old Liam Aiken ("I Dreamed Of Africa") have the inside track.

Muniz is still in the chase, of course, and highly unlikely to lose any sleep over the film role as he is currently shooting the motion picture "Deuces Wild" for MGM Studios and feeling quite secure as he starts to shoot another 13 episodes of "Malcolm in the Middle" in August. Besides, he`s still busy promoting his last feature film, "My Dog Skip," and the recent Disney Channel telefilm "Miracle in Lane 2."

Despite steady employment for six years and the current flurry of activity, Muniz is completely charged-up and ready for new challenges as they come down the pike.

"I guess I thought that acting was going to be a lot harder than it is," he says, laughing. "Some people find it very difficult, but to me it`s just easy and fun. It`s awesome.

"Acting is like a sport, an activity that`s lots of fun and really cool to do," he continues. "I can`t imagine doing anything else for a living when I grow up. Why should I? I have already done more than 40 TV commercials, six movies, a couple of television films and a bunch of episodic guest shots. And even though I`ve done a lot of acting, I still love going to work in the morning."

In the title role of "Malcolm in the Middle," Muniz is part of a totally dysfunctional middle-class family composed of extremely harried parents - Lois and Hal (Jane Kaczmarek and Bryan Cranston) - and three bickering brothers (Christopher Kennedy Masterson, Justin Berfield and Erik Per Sullivan). Malcolm`s care-free, skateboarding existence with his slacker buddies is shattered when he is cursed with an IQ of 165 and forced to associate with a bunch of geeky, really smart social misfits.

The precocious actor was a resident of Wood-Ridge, N.J., when he auditioned in New York for the Malcolm part last year. The scenes he read were videotaped and sent to Hollywood. Linwood Boomer, the show`s creator and executive producer, couldn`t believe his eyes and demanded a second video. Still doubting his stroke of fortune, Boomer flew Muniz and his mother to Hollywood for a screen test.

"It was a perfect day in L.A., when everything went right," Muniz recalls. "Two minutes after we got back to the hotel room from the screen test, the phone rang. We had four phone lines, so my mom grabbed one of them to talk to my agent. I answered another line, and it was `Malcolm`s` casting director. She said, `I just want to say you got it.` I yelled, `Mom, I got it!` She threw her phone in the air, and we both started jumping up and down on the bed. It was sooo cool!"

Two weeks later, the pilot was in the can, but there was no break as he was already booked for a short run in a stage production of Horton Foote`s "The Death of Papa" in Hartford, Conn. Muniz and his mother received the news that "Malcolm" had been picked up on Fox`s fall schedule ,and they made their move to Los Angeles six weeks later. His 15-year-old sister, Cristina, stayed behind in Wood-Ridge with her grandparents in order to finish high school.

"My mom and me are used to traveling together, so it wasn`t hard to pack up and go to California," he explains. "It was kinda weird because it had always been my dream to be bi-coastal. During the pilot season, I kept pestering my mom about living in L.A., and she kept saying that it could happen if I got job here. Well, it happened, and it`s so cool. The weather is great, and I can play golf the whole year round. The only thing I don`t like are all the cars. I can`t believe it. There are millions of them on the freeways!"

Muniz, who learned to play golf from his grandfather at the age of 5, has a 13 handicap. No pushover on the links, he takes on any adult that comes his way - including the producer of "My Dog Skip" in a recent match that wound up in his favor. Give him two years, and he will learn to never, ever beat an executive producer in golf.

"I love golf; it comes a close second to acting," he says.

A true animal lover, he had a blast shooting "My Dog Skip," a family picture about how a faithful dog changed a boy`s life.

"I don`t think I`ve had that much fun on a set before," he says. "The lead dog is a Jack Russell terrier named Enzo, but I worked with six dogs in all. That includes Moose, who plays Eddie on `Frasier,` and a stunt dog named Sherman. Then there were the three puppies - Sweetie, Rosie and Jasper. I looooove them all."

He also enjoys the slapstick humor on "Malcolm," taking every opportunity to get wet or dirty.

"The coolest scene so far was in the grocery store where our mom works," he recalls, chuckling. "Three of us boys get into all kinds of trouble when we fight over a carpet steam cleaner. The machine starts shooting foam, and Justin sticks the nozzle down my back. Pretty soon the foam starts puffing up under my shirt and pouring out of sleeves. It was so fun."

Going into the ninth grade in the fall, Muniz expects his education to continue being divided between tutors on the set and private schools between projects.

"It`s a little difficult at times, because I have to have at least three hours of school every day on the set," he explains. "But you can bank those hours, so you can spend more time in school on light days and less hours on heavy days. On `Malcolm,` we have a little school room in an office for Justin, Erik and me."

Though born in Wood-Ridge, he was reared in Knightdale, N.C., until his parents` divorce when he was 11. His mother, a former nurse, and his father, a restaurant manager, had no objections when he followed in his big sister`s footsteps in local stage productions at the age of 8. Muniz made his professional debut as Tiny Tim on a Raleigh, N.C., theater production of "A Christmas Carol" and the first of 40-odd commercials a year later. Then movies kept coming his way, including "Lost and Found," "It Had to Be You" and "Little Man."

"I don`t know why, but it seems like everything came easy," he says hesitantly. "And it`s still fun. It`s weird."

(c) Copley News Service

Article continues below

---

advertisement

---

Author: Eirik Knutzen