Frankie Muniz has tried to make sense of his struggle with memory loss, and may have found the culprit.
During his appearance on The Joe Vulpis Podcast, Muniz seemingly suspects the expectations that came with being an actor trained his brain to briefly retain information and erase it soon after.
"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."
Since this has been his brain's mode of operation dating back to when he was eight years old, Muniz believed he has applied that approach beyond acting.
"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 pointed out that three days before speaking with Vulpis, he competed in race, and can only remember two or three of the 250 laps.
"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 his brain functioned that way because of acting, Muniz responded, "I think so. I think it's also because I did too much at a young age."
Muniz raised concerns following his 2019 interview with People where the actor and race car driver admitted he cannot recall certain aspects 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 attempted to clarify previous remarks he made about extent of his memory loss on Steve-O's Wild Ride. In the process, the 40-year-old actor and race car driver stated that playing sports, such as basketball and football, when he was younger, resulted in nine concussions.
Muniz said at the time that "a lot" of his struggles with memory loss stem from determining if a dream is actually a memory.
