Frankie Muniz wasn’t just a child star — he was one of the child stars of the early aughts. At 13, he became the brainy, wisecracking Malcolm in Malcolm in the Middle, a role that earned him Golden Globe and Emmy nods and turned him into one of the most recognizable faces on TV. By 15, he’d bought his first house. By 17, he was on red carpets and in L.A. clubs with Paris Hilton and the Hollywood It Crowd — though Muniz tells Us Weekly he was always the designated driver. “I felt like I’d lived 80 years already,” he recalls, “because I just did so much.”

Then, at the height of his fame, he did something no one expected: he walked away. Ready to try something new after years of nonstop work in front of the camera (“Between ages 8 and 21, I maybe had 60 days off,” he says), the actor traded

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