Even at the tender age of 18, Frankie Muniz has an adult’s conscientiousness about his work.
We caught up with Muniz in Miami to talk about his new movie Agent Cody Banks–in which he plays a seemingly regular 16-year-old high schooler who hangs with his friends and can’t talk to girls, but who happens to be a trained junior CIA agent out to save the world–fully expecting him to talk about how awesome and cool it was to play a secret agent who gets to do all these crazy stunts. After all, he is the endearingly boyish live wire Malcolm on Fox’s hit series Malcolm in the Middle.
Instead, Muniz is a very poised young man who has shed some of that boyishness and has turned into an actor very committed to his craft. He certainly doesn’t consider himself to be your average teenager; in fact, adults have told him he’s an “old soul.”
Which means that even in playing a CIA agent, performing amazing stunts, playing with some super-cool gadgets and working with ‘tween sensation Hilary Duff (Lizzie Maguire), Muniz still wants to take things seriously.
“I’m not into teenage things, which I guess makes me different,” Muniz explains. “I’m into just working and doing what I have to do to get my work done. I have a serious attitude about getting everything done well.”
Serious as he may be, getting in touch with his inner James Bond was a fun exercise for Muniz–even if that exercise involved four hours of training a day to prepare for the role. “I saw The Bourne Identity when we were filming and Matt Damon had like these insane fight sequences,” Muniz says, eyes lighting up. “And I was going, ‘That’s what I can make this look like! I can look like that!’ Matt Damon is this tough guy without really trying.”
Oddly enough, he found that doing the dangerous-looking stunts, like racing down a street on a skateboard, trying to stop a runaway car or using martial arts to fight off bullies, was the easy part of making the film. It was the little stuff that proved more difficult.
“The crazy stuff, I just did. Didn’t think about it,” he says. “The scariest were the easy ones because I had more time to think about them.”
Like having to talk to a girl? Muniz admits, “Yeah, um, I can’t approach a girl. I’ve never approached a girl in my life–I’m too scared. If a girl comes up to me, then I can have a conversation just fine. I just can’t start one.”
On the other hand, talking with Duff, who plays the daughter of a brilliant scientist and the one person Cody has to get close to in order to stop the bad guys, wasn’t such a hard thing for Muniz to do. The two have been friends for five years and have watched each other careers grow. “Yeah, she was one of the first people I met when I moved out to California.” Muniz says, smiling. “We kinda went through the trenches together.”
The fact remains Muniz is certainly getting a following, especially with the ‘tween (10-14) set and after Banks, he could become the next teen heartthrob.
“Sometimes its weird. In L.A., seriously, like on every corner there is a huge billboard for Agent Cody Banks or on the sides of buses. One time, I was driving alongside a bus and I look over and there I was. I was like ‘That’s me!'”
Muniz muses, “It really hasn’t sunk in. Nothing in my life has sunk in.”
And even when it does all sink in, the young actor isn’t under any false pretenses that it will last forever. “I’m working nonstop now. Eventually it’ll die down and there will be someone new. So right now, when people do want to see my movies, I’m taking advantage of it.”
An old soul indeed. No doubt we’ll be calling him “Frank” soon enough.
Agent Cody Banks is currently playing in theaters.
