Earlier than he hit puberty, Haley Joel Osment had already starred in two of the most important blockbuster dramas of all time, earned an Oscar nomination, and cemented his place in popular culture historical past by uttering the long-lasting line, “I see lifeless individuals.” As it’s for a lot of actors who made their mark as preadolescents, the street to maturity was a bit bumpy for the previous baby star. However Osment remains to be performing and has aspirations behind the digicam as effectively. Maintain studying to seek out out the place his profession has taken him over time and what he is doing at the moment at age 34.
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Osment’s function as a haunted younger boy in The Sixth Sense cemented his standing as one of the crucial celebrated baby performers ever and earned him an Oscar nomination for Finest Supporting Actor. However by then, he’d already constructed up a powerful résumé. Quickly after touchdown his first job—a Pizza Hut business—at age 4, Osment was solid within the sitcom Thunder Alley alongside Ed Asner, performed the son of Tom Hanks’ Forrest Gump in that 1994 Oscar-winning movie, and appeared on The Jeff Foxworthy Present, Walker, Texas Ranger, Ally McBeal, and Murphy Brown.
Although he adopted up The Sixth Sense with a lauded flip in Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi movie A.I. Synthetic Intelligence, appeared alongside Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt in Pay It Ahead, and co-starred with Michael Caine in Secondhand Lions, he not often confirmed up onscreen throughout his teen years. He was busier doing voice-work for animated characters in movies together with Nation Bears, The Hunchback of Notre Dame II, and The Jungle E book 2. He additionally started voicing the lead character Sora within the in style online game Kingdom Hearts, first launched in 2003.
Over the subsequent 10 years, he acted sporadically, showing in a poorly acquired 2008 Broadway manufacturing of David Mamet’s American Buffalo and some impartial and direct-to-DVD movies.
Although he appears to have made the transition from baby star to grownup extra simply than a few of his extra troubled friends, Osment did have a couple of struggles alongside the best way. In 2006, when he was 18, he was injured in a automotive crash in Los Angeles and later pleaded no contest to driving drunk and misdemeanor drug possession.
That very same yr, Osment moved to New York Metropolis to check experimental theater at New York College’s Tisch College of the Arts. “It simply felt actually vital for me to do it at that age,” he advised The Hollywood Reporter in 2019. “There’s solely going to be one alternative while you’re 18 years previous and you progress to a unique metropolis and also you’re finding out performing round individuals which might be all your personal age.”
After commencement, he was keen to maneuver past his former baby star status and took on loser and villain roles in movies together with the 2014 comedy Intercourse Ed and the low-budget Kevin Smith horror thriller Tusk. He lampooned himself with a visitor look on Entourage, appeared in 12 episodes of the Prime Video political satire Alpha Home, and confirmed off his humorousness on the sketch comedy sequence Comedy Bang! Bang! and Drunk Historical past. He even grew a beard with a purpose to “attempt to cover in public,” he advised The Guardian in 2020.
Osment is not the one actor in his household. His sister Emily Osment, who’s 4 years youthful, adopted him into the highlight at a younger age, showing in commercials and ’90s TV exhibits together with Touched by and Angel and Associates earlier than taking larger roles within the Spy Youngsters sequence and the Disney Channel sequence Hannah Montana, alongside Miley Cyrus.
Watching his sister’s profession led Osment to replicate on his personal. Her path to fame was “approach harder,” he advised The Guardian.
‘She needed to cope with much more unusual invasions of privateness, not having the ability to have a traditional college life. And what exacerbated all of that was she needed to be on social media,” he continued. “I resisted till I used to be, like, 27.”
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As of late, Osment remains to be performing. He was a sequence common within the Hulu sci-fi sequence Future Man, performed a dim-witted tech investor in HBO’s Silicon Valley, acted reverse Zac Efron within the serial killer drama Extraordinarily Depraved, Shockingly Evil and Vile, and guested on exhibits together with The X-Information, The Boys, What We Do within the Shadows, The Kominsky Methodology (along with his sister Emily), and the ultimate season of the Prime Video authorized drama Goliath.
Virtually two decadees after he started, Osment nonetheless voices Sora within the Kingdom Hearts video games, the fourth of which was introduced earlier this yr. “I by no means may have count on on the time I may have been a 20-year relationship with a personality,” he advised Deadline in April. “It’s by far the longest I’ve had with any mission of any type.”
He hopes his subsequent profession transfer will take him behind the digicam—after 13 years in New York, he not too long ago moved again to LA to attempt to make it occur, he advised The Guardian—however he would not remorse his time as a baby star. “I believe the proportion of individuals having a constructive expertise working as youngsters is way larger than most individuals think about,” he mentioned. “I am fortunate to have a constructive relationship with these durations that may typically be tough for different individuals.”
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