Early Life
Muñiz was born (December 5, 1985) and grew up in Ridgewood, New Jersey He is the son of Denise, a former nurse, and Francisco Muñiz III, a restaurant manager. His father is Puerto Rican, whose ancestral origins descend from Asturias, Spain, and his mother is of Italian and Irish descent. He has an elder sister, Cristina. Muniz was first discovered at the age of eight, at a talent show in Raleigh, North Carolina (shortly after the family moved from New Jersey), where he was cast as Tiny Tim in a local production of A Christmas Carol. His parents divorced shortly after. He subsequently moved to Burbank, California, with his mother. He appeared in commercials and made his film debut in the made-for-television movie To Dance With Olivia (1997), starring Lou Gossett Jr. In that same year, he appeared in the CBS Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation of What the Deaf Man Heard. A small role in the film Lost & Found (1999) led to his breakout role as the title character on Malcolm in the Middle.
Read more about this topic: Frankie Muniz
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“The shift from the perception of the child as innocent to the perception of the child as competent has greatly increased the demands on contemporary children for maturity, for participating in competitive sports, for early academic achievement, and for protecting themselves against adults who might do them harm. While children might be able to cope with any one of those demands taken singly, taken together they often exceed children’s adaptive capacity.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“The addition of a helpless, needy infant to a couple’s life limits freedom of movement, changes role expectancies, places physical demands on parents, and restricts spontaneity.”
—Jerrold Lee Shapiro (20th century)