Haley Joel OsmentHaley Joel Osment is a teenage actor and former child star best known for playing the boy who could see dead people in M Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense.
Haley Joel Osment was born on April 10, 1988, in Los Angeles, California. His father is the actor Michael Osment, and his mother Theresa is a teacher. Osment’s younger sister, Emily Jordan Osment, is also an actress and made a splash in the latter two of Robert Rodriguez's Spy Kids films with Antonio Banderas and Matt O'Leary. However, it wasn't family connections which made the young Osment a star. At the age of four, he was playing in a shopping mall when a Pizza Hut representative spotted him and suggested that he audition for a commercial. Osment won the audition, and the commercial caught the attention of director Robert Zemeckis, who subsequently cast him as Tom Hanks' son in Forrest Gump.
As well as appearing in the movies, Osment took advantage of his new found fame to launch a promising career in television. He appeared on The Larry Sanders Show and got a regular part as Edward Asner's grandson in Thunder Alley, going on to star in The Jeff Foxworthy Show and play Candice Bergen's son in Murphy Brown. Osment has also been in Walker: Texas Ranger, with Chuck Norris and Clarence Gilyard Jr., and The Pretender, with Michael T Weiss and Angela Parker; and has contributed voice work to shows including Hey Arnold! and Family Guy. Osment also received acclaim for playing a child dying of cancer in Ally McBeal. Despite all this work, the actor found time to devote to his schooling at Flintridge Prep., and was a straight-A student. He now hopes to go on to Yale University.
Although he had already starred in several films - including Bogus, with Whoopi Goldberg and Gérard Depardieu; Last Stand At Saber River, with Tom Selleck and Suzy Amis; and I'll Remember April, with Suzy Amis and Trevor Morgan - it was M Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense that really made Osment a star. Playing a disturbed child with the ability to see ghosts, he easily held his own alongside the established talents of Bruce Willis and Toni Collette. The film's enormous success put him firmly on Hollywood's A-list and won him an Oscar nomination; though he lost out to Michael Caine (for Cider House Rules). Caine singled him out for praise in his acceptance speech. Osment went on to deliver a sensitive performance in Pay it Forward, with Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt, and Jon Bon Jovi, which demonstrated the range of his talents. Next came Steven Spielberg's A.I., an adaptation of Brian Aldiss' Supertoys Last All Summer Long, which also starred Jude Law and William Hurt. Neither film was as successful as its producers had hoped, but they left Osment with plenty of opportunities. He will next be seen as a high school journalist in Home of the Giants, with Ryan Merriman and Danielle Panabaker.
Osment narrowly missed out on the part of the young Anakin Skywalker in George Lucas' Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, and he chose to turn down the lead in the Harry Potter films, feeling that J K Rowling's books would lose their magic if transferred to the screen. In his spare time Osment enjoys reading (favorite authors including J.R.R. Tolkien and Edgar Allen Poe), watching wrestling, and listening to bands like R.E.M. and Muse. Unfortunately, a recent trip to a Muse concert ended in disaster for the young star, when driving home, he crashed his car into a mailbox. Fracturing a rib, he was forced to spend time in hospital, and was subsequently charged with driving under the influence of alcohol and possession of marijuana. Osment has since begun therapy for alcohol abuse. The actor lives with his parents and sister in Los Angeles. YUDDY |
