Frankie Muniz may be the only actor who has been nominated for an Emmy award and driven in a NASCAR event at Daytona. But if Muniz had been old enough to get a driver’s license before he moved to Hollywood, there may never have been a “Malcolm in the Middle.”
“When I’m in that race car and I put my visor down and I drive out of that pit lane, I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be,” he said. “That’s what I’m supposed to do and that’s what I’m doing.”
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And acting?
“I don’t feel like I’m a good actor,” he said. “I know I can act. But when I look at good acting, I go ‘dang, I could never do that’.”
That’s not true, of course. Muniz, who started acting when he was 12, has been credited in 26 films and 37 TV shows, including the title role in “Malcolm in the Middle,” which earned him two Golden Globe nominations and one Emmy nod during its seven-year run on Fox.
But acting was a profession. Racing is a passion.
“Excitement and all the emotions. That’s what I love about racing,” he said. “The highs are so high and the lows are unbelievably low. It’s awesome.”
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Muniz placed 28th in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Indianapolis Raceway Park on Friday. He is 23rd among the 64 drivers listed in the series points standings, with his one top-10 finish coming in the season opener at Daytona.
Muniz, 39, isn’t the first actor to try racing. Paul Newman was a four-time SCCA national champion who finished second in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1979 while Patrick Dempsey (“Grey’s Anatomy,” “Can’t Buy Me Love”) has driven sports cars at Le Mans and in the Rolex 24 at Daytona, in addition to other series.
Frankie Muniz qualifies at Daytona International Speedway in February. (Phelan M. Ebenhack / Associated Press)
But driving isn’t a side hustle for Muniz, who last October signed with North Carolina-based Reaume Brothers Racing to be the full-time driver of the team’s No. 33 Ford in the truck series. Muniz also raced twice last year in the NASCAR Xfinity Series.
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“When I originally started racing, I was kind of at the height of my [acting] career. I had tons of offers to do movies and shows and all that,” said Muniz, who made his stock-car debut in the fall of 2021 in Bakersfield, then accepted an offer to drive full time in the ARCA Menards Series in 2023. “Very easily could have stayed in that business. But I wanted to give racing a try. And to compete at the top level, you have to put in the time and effort that professional race car drivers are doing, right? You can’t do it halfway.”
Muniz was into racing before he even thought about acting. Growing up in North Carolina, he remembers waking early on the weekend to watch IndyCar and NASCAR races on TV. No one else in his family shared his interest in motorsports, so when his parents divorced shortly after Muniz was discovered acting in a talent show at age 8, his mother moved to Burbank, where he made his film debut alongside Louis Gossett Jr. in 1997’s “To Dance With Olivia.”
Two years later he was cast as the gifted middle child of a dysfunctional working-class family in the successful sitcom “Malcolm in the Middle.” Motorsports continued to tug at him so after running in a few celebrity events, Muniz twice put his acting career on hold to race, first in 2007 — shortly after “Malcolm” ended after seven seasons and 151 episodes — when he started a three-season run in the open-wheel Atlantic Championship series.
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Still, Muniz, who lives with his wife Paige and 4-year-old son Mauz in Scottsdale, Ariz., is dogged by criticism he is little more than a weekend warrior who is using his substantial Hollywood reputation and earnings to live out his racing fantasies.
“I don’t spend any of my money going racing,” he said. “I made a promise to my wife that I would not do that. So I can kill that rumor right there.”
But those whispers persist partly because Muniz hasn’t completely cut ties with acting. Because the truck series doesn’t run every weekend, racing 25 times between Valentine’s Day and Halloween, Muniz had time to tape a “Malcolm in the Middle” reunion miniseries that is scheduled to air on Disney+ in December.
He has also appeared in two other TV projects and two films since turning to racing full time. But his focus, he insists, is on driving.
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“If I wanted to go racing for fun,” he said, “I would not be racing in the truck series. I’d be racing at my local track or I’d be racing some SCCA club events. I want to be one of the top drivers there are. I want to make it as high up in NASCAR as I can. And I’m doing everything I can to do that.”
Fame outside of racing can be a double-edged sword in the high-cost world of NASCAR. It can open doors to a ride and sponsorships others can’t get, but it can also cause jealousy in the garage, with drivers crediting that fame and not talent for a rival’s success. And Muniz isn’t the only rookie driver who has had to deal with that.
Toni Breidinger, who finished 27th in Friday’s race and is one place and eight points ahead of Muniz in the season standings with nine races left, is a model who has posed for Victoria’s Secret and been featured in the pages of Glamour, GQ and Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition. She’s also a good driver who has been going fast on a racetrack far longer than she’s been walking slowly down a catwalk.
Toni Breidinger prepares for NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series practice at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park on Friday. (Justin Casterline / Getty Images)
“I was definitely a racer before anything. That was definitely my passion,” said Breidinger, who started driving go-karts in Northern California when she was 9. “I’ve been lucky enough to be able to do modeling to help support that passion. But at the end of the day, I definitely consider myself a racer. That’s what I grew up doing and that’s the career I’ve always wanted do to.”
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Still, she sees the two pursuits as being complementary. When Breidinger appears on a red carpet, as she did before this month’s ESPY Awards in Los Angeles, it helps her modeling career while at the same time giving the sponsors of her racing team — which includes 818 Tequila, Dave & Buster’s and the fashion brand Coach — added value.
“It’s all part of the business. It all goes back into my racing,” said Breidinger, 26, who is of German and Lebanese descent. “The side hustles, I like to call them. I don’t think that takes away from me being a race car driver.”
Breidinger, who won the USAC western asphalt midget series title as a teenager, raced in the ARCA Menards Series for five years before stepping up to truck series in 2021, making NASCAR history in 2023 when she finished 15th in her first race, the best-ever debut by a female driver. That helped her land a full-time ride this season with Tricon Garage, Toyota’s flagship team in the truck series.
Like Muniz, Breidinger sees the truck series, the third tier of NASCAR’s national racing series, as a steppingstone to a seat in a Cup car.
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“I want to climb the national ladder. That’s what I’m here to do,” she said. “I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t have long-term plans and long-term goals. I’m a very competitive person, especially with myself.”
Kyle Larson, who climbed to the top of that ladder, running his first NASCAR national series race in a truck in 2012, then winning the 2021 Cup championship nine years later, said the path he took — and the one Muniz and Breidinger are following — is a well-worn one.
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“Anybody racing in any of the three series has talent and ability enough to be there,” he said.
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Funding, Larson said, and not talent and ability, often determines how fast a driver can make that climb and that might be a problem for Muniz since Josh Reaume, the owner of the small three-truck team Muniz drives for, has complained about the price of racing. It can cost more than $3.5 million a year to field one competitive truck in the 25-race series — and that cost is rising, threatening to price many out of the sport.
But having drivers like Muniz and Breidinger in NASCAR will help everyone in the series, Larson said, because it will bring in fans and sponsors that might not have been attracted to the sport otherwise.
“I just hope that he can get into a situation someday where you can really see his talent from being in a car or a truck that is better equipped to go run towards the front,” Larson said of Muniz. “You want to see him succeed because if he does succeed, it’s only going to do good things for our sport.”
And if it works out the way Muniz hopes, perhaps he’ll someday be the answer to another trivia question: Name the NASCAR champion who once worked in Hollywood.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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