Haley Joel Osment
Osment, pictured in 2001
Born	Haley Joel Osment April 10, 1988 (1988-04-10) (age 20) Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.
Years active	1994 ─ present
Official website
Awards won Other awards Saturn Award for Best Performance by a Younger Actor 1999 The Sixth Sense 2001 Artificial Intelligence: A.I.

Haley Joel Osment (born April 10, 1988) is an Academy Award-nominated American actor. After a series of roles in television and film during the early 1990s, including a small role as the title character's son in Forrest Gump, he came to fame with his starring role as Cole Sear in M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense (1999). He subsequently had leading roles in several high-profile Hollywood films, including Pay It Forward and A.I. Currently he appears on Broadway in a revival of American Buffalo, with John Leguizamo, and Cedric the Entertainer starring.¹

Biography

Personal life

Osment was born in Los Angeles, California,² the son of Theresa (née Seifert), a teacher, and Michael Eugene Osment,³ a theater and film actor, both natives of Alabama. His childhood was described by his parents as a "good old-fashioned Southern upbringing", and his father said that when Osment was learning to talk, he avoided using baby talk to communicate with him. He has one sister four years his junior, actress Emily Osment.⁴ Osment was raised as a Catholic,⁵ and was a straight-A student at Flintridge Preparatory School in La Cañada, California.⁶ As a child, Osment was talented in many sports, including basketball, football and golf.⁷ According to Osment's official website, he follows a mostly vegetarian diet (though he does like chicken and fish),⁸ and in an interview with Daniel Robert Epstein, Osment said he plays the guitar and piano.⁹ He currently attends New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.¹⁰

Osment received injuries, including a broken shoulder when his car struck a mailbox and overturned near his home on July 20, 2006.¹¹ On October 19, 2006 Osment pleaded no contest to one count each of misdemeanor driving under the influence of alcohol, and possession of marijuana while driving. He was sentenced to three years probation, 60 hours in an alcohol rehabilitation and education program, a fine of $1500, and a minimum requirement of 26 Alcoholics Anonymous meetings over a six-month period.¹²¹³

Career

Osment began acting at the age of four, when his mother took him to a new Ikea store. A talent scout was there looking for new actors, and Osment put his name down. He got called back for an audition, and he was asked to describe the biggest thing he had ever seen; he described an IMAX theater screen and won the part in a Pizza Hut commercial, advertising the "Big Foot" pizza.⁴ The commercial launched his career, and he starred in Thunder Alley, his first television role, later that year.¹⁴ His first film role was as Forrest Gump's son, also named Forrest Gump, in the 1994 film of the same name.¹⁵ He had roles in numerous TV series, including The Jeff Foxworthy Show and the final season of Murphy Brown, in which he replaced Dylan Christopher as Murphy's son Avery. He also made a small appearance in Mixed Nuts. He made numerous guest appearances in various TV series including The Larry Sanders Show, Walker, Texas Ranger (as a child dying from AIDS),¹⁶ Touched by an Angel, Chicago Hope, The Pretender, and as a child dying from leukemia in the emotional episode "Angels and Blimps" of the late-1990s show Ally McBeal.

Osment starred in Bogus alongside Whoopi Goldberg and Gérard Depardieu, and appeared in the 1998 made-for-TV movie The Lake with Yasmine Bleeth, as well as I'll Remember April with future The Sixth Sense co-star Trevor Morgan. He first achieved stardom in 1999 when he appeared in the blockbuster The Sixth Sense, co-starring Bruce Willis. For this role, he won the Saturn Award for best young actor. He was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor but lost to Michael Caine (alongside whom he would later star in Secondhand Lions). One of Osment's lines in The Sixth Sense, "I see dead people" is often repeated or parodied on television programs and in other media. He also made three minor guest appearances on Family Guy in 2000.

The 2000 Academy Awards ceremony honored another future co-star, Best Actor Kevin Spacey, who, along with Helen Hunt, appeared in Osment's next film, Pay It Forward. The following year, he appeared in Steven Spielberg's Artificial Intelligence: A.I., cementing his stature as one of the leading young actors in Hollywood. This role earned him his second Saturn Award. Also in 2001, Osment starred in the Polish film, Edges of the Lord, as Romek. The movie was never released theatrically in the United States. He has since provided voices for The Country Bears, The Hunchback of Notre Dame II and The Jungle Book 2, and returned to live action with the 2003 film, Secondhand Lions.

More recently, Osment was the voice of Sora, the main protagonist of The Walt Disney Company and Square-Enix's Kingdom Hearts video game series, which has been extremely financially successful as well as generally well-received critically. He was also the voice of Takeshi Jinno, the main character of the Immortal Grand Prix anime TV series. Osment next appeared in Home of the Giants, playing a high school journalist opposite Ryan Merriman and Danielle Panabaker. He is currently working on Montana Amazon as both actor and executive producer. The film also co-stars Olympia Dukakis and is expected to be released in 2009.

Haley outside American Buffalo, November 21, 2008.

Osment made his Broadway theatre debut as Bobby in a revival of David Mamet's American Buffalo, co-starring with John Leguizamo and Cedric the Entertainer, at the Belasco Theatre in November, 2008.¹⁷¹⁸ The production of American Buffalo received mixed reviews during its opening and made a provisional statement on November 20, 2008 that it would close after its first week.¹⁹ Osment, who played a young heroin addict in the production, was given one sentence in the New York Times review of the production: "Mr. Osment’s facial stubble and slumping posture fail to override the impression that he’s giving a perfect School of Disney juvenile performance."²⁰ Newsday, however, said, "Haley Joel Osment...has a sweet, haunting neediness as a slacker who appears to recognize a kind of death in himself."

Filmography

References

External links

• Haley Joel Osment official website
• Haley Joel Osment at the Internet Movie Database
• "Official Broadway Site" Website for the 2008 Broadway Production of American Buffalo starring John Leguizamo, Cedric the Entertainer, and Haley Joel Osment