Then & now

Haley Joel Osment, actor

“I SEE DEAD PEOPLE.” Let’s face it, when an 11-year-old says that to you in a deadpan voice, you’re going to sit up and take notice. It’s certainly got a bit more impact than, say, “I can drink lemonade through my nose.” When Haley Joel Osment revealed his ghost-spotting talent to Bruce Willis in the 1999 film The Sixth Sense, everyone sat up and took notice of the serious-looking child star of one of the year’s biggest box-office hits. Audiences who flocked to see M Night Shayamalan’s paranormal thriller were urged not to give away the film’s mind-blowing plot twist, and pundits were already polishing their crystal balls to predict a great future for the Oscar-nominated youngster from LA.

Osment’s fame appeared to be sealed when he starred as a lonely robot boy in Stephen Spielberg’s sci-fi film, AI, based on a Brian Aldiss short story, Super-Toys Last All Summer Long. In the film, Osment’s artificial character spends centuries in a limbo state (yeah, it was all-action and thrills). In real life, Osment has spent just under a decade off the radar, but he’s making his film comeback this year as a Daisy Duke-wearing gay 20-something in the upcoming comedy Sassy Pants. Now there’s a twist.

For a while in the mid-noughties, it looked as though Osment was about to go the way of many other child stars before – and after – him, and sink into drugs, alcoholism and delinquent behaviour. In 2006, he was busted for drink and drugs after crashing his car into a mailbox. His biggest role of that year was the voice of Sora in the video game Kingdom Hearts – hardly a Spielbergian blockbuster, though reportedly a cracking good game series.

Along with voiceover work, Osment also starred in a Broadway revival of American Buffalo. Sadly, the show was a flop, and Osment returned to his studies at New York University. He graduated last year, majoring in experimental theatre, which might explain his recent offbeat casting choices. In Sassy Pants, he plays the flamboyantly gay lover of the main character’s dad; his next project sees him return to the dead zone in Wake the Dead, a new reading of the Frankenstein story.

Now 23, Osment lives with his dad, actor Michael Eugene Osment, his mother, Theresa, a schoolteacher, and his younger sister, Emily. He flits between New York, where he stars regularly in off-Broadway plays, and LA, where he’s hoping to score more grown-up movie roles. Who knows, we might soon see him in The Sixth Sense 2 – Back from the Dead.