Featured Image Credit: Satin City Productions/20th Century Fox Television/James Gilbert/Getty Images
Topics: Frankie Muniz, Money
Anish Vij
Topics: Frankie Muniz, Money
Child actor Frankie Muniz featured in one of the most popular US sitcoms of all time in Malcolm in the Middle.
Aged just 13, Muniz played Malcom, the boy with a genius IQ living with his dysfunctional working-class family in America.
Jane Kaczmarek starred as his strict mother Lois, while Bryan Cranston was his immature and fun-loving father Hal.
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In the TV series, Malcolm also had to deal with his crazy brothers, Francis (Christopher Masterson), Reese (Justin Berfield), and Dewey (Erik Per Sullivan).
Running from 2000 to 2006 on Fox, Malcolm in the Middle managed seven Emmy Award wins, one Grammy Award win and seven Golden Globe nominations.
As you can imagine, Muniz would have been making some very decent money back in the day.
Having continuously renegotiated his salary, Muniz was eventually making a reported $150,000 (£114,408) per episode, which is certainly not bad for a teenager, or anyone for that matter.
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These days, however, the 38-year-old has put his acting career on hold to become more of an open-wheel driver, competing part-time in the NASCAR Xfinity Series.
And for anyone wondering, his estimated net worth is around $30 million (£22.88 million).
Celebrity Net Worth reports that Muniz 'earned around $10.15 million (£7.74 million) in base salaries alone from the first run episodes of Malcolm in the Middle. With union royalty rates, he likely 'earned around 80 percent of that in the show’s first syndication run'.
Despite doing extremely well for himself, Muniz has insisted that he doesn't want his kid to become a child actor.
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Muniz shares Mauz, three, with his wife, Paige Price
“I would never let my kid go into the business. Not that I had a negative experience, because, to be honest, my experience was 100 percent positive,” he told Pedestrian TV.
“But I know so many people, friends that were close to me, that had such insanely negative experiences.
“I think it’s an ugly world in general. I never cared about rejection, but there’s a ton of rejection.
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“I truly say that becoming a successful actor is like winning the lottery because, in the beginning, that’s all it is.
“Me getting into Malcolm in the Middle, maybe that was a little different than other shows, but as a child actor, you get picked because you could be the kid of the parents they picked.
“I think people think it’s an easy thing to break into, but I like to be honest about it and say there’s a million people in Hollywood who tried.
“Maybe they’re amazing actors — they can be the best actors on the planet! — but they don’t even get the opportunity.
“It’s not like going into a different industry where you can work really hard and get into it.”