Frankie Muniz has been trying to understand why he struggles with memory loss, and he believes he may have uncovered the reason.
While appearing on The Joe Vulpis Podcast, Muniz suggested that the demands of being an actor may have trained his brain to temporarily hold onto information and then quickly let it go.
“As an actor, you take on a script, a role, and someone’s emotion and someone’s problem and someone’s argument, or someone’s happiness, or someone’s…whatever,” he said. “And you do it for that day, or for that hour or two, and then you forget it.”
Muniz explained that this pattern started when he was just eight years old, and he thinks it carried over into other parts of his life.
“For so long, since I was eight years old, I’ve had to, like, pretend to do things, and be things, and then forget it,” he said. “And unfortunately, now I think I do that a lot with my real life, too.”
Muniz also shared an example from just days before the interview, revealing that he had recently competed in a race but could only remember two or three laps out of roughly 250.
“My brain just kinda, like, does it in the moment, and goes to attack, and then focuses on the next,” he explained.
When asked if acting played a role in how his brain functions, Muniz replied, “I think so. I think it’s also because I did too much at a young age.”
The actor previously opened up about his memory issues in a 2019 interview with People, where he admitted he struggles to remember parts of his childhood.
“I’m only reminded of how bad my memory is when people I see, they come to me and go, ‘Oh, you remember when we did this? Remember we went on this trip to this country?'” he said. “And I have no recollection of it, but in my head, it’s not like I feel bad or sad about it.”
Muniz also took time to clarify earlier comments he made on Steve-O’s Wild Ride. During that discussion, the 40-year-old actor and race car driver revealed that playing sports like basketball and football when he was younger led to nine concussions.
At the time, Muniz explained that “a lot” of his memory struggles come from trying to tell the difference between actual memories and dreams.
