Haley Joel Osment - Career

Career

Osment's acting career began at the age of four, when his mother took him to a new Ikea store and they encountered a talent scout looking for new actors. Osment put his name down and got called back for an audition. Asked to describe the biggest thing he had ever seen, Osment described an IMAX theater screen and won the part in a Pizza Hut TV commercial, advertising their "Big Foot" pizza. The commercial launched his career, and later that year he starred in the ABC TV sitcom Thunder Alley, his first role in series television. His first feature film role was as Forrest Gump's son, also named Forrest Gump, in the 1994 film of the same name. He also had a small part in another 1994 film, Mixed Nuts. Throughout the rest of 1990s, Osment played regular and/or recurring roles in various TV series; including The Jeff Foxworthy Show and the final season of Murphy Brown, where he replaced Dyllan Christopher as Murphy's son, Avery.

In addition, he made numerous guest appearances on shows including The Larry Sanders Show, Walker, Texas Ranger, Touched by an Angel, Chicago Hope, The Pretender, and Ally Mcbeal. He appeared in the 1996 film Bogus, alongside Whoopi Goldberg and Gérard Depardieu and the 1998 made-for-TV movie The Lake, as well as I'll Remember April (1999), with future The Sixth Sense co-star Trevor Morgan.

Osment first achieved stardom in 1999, when he appeared in The Sixth Sense, co-starring Bruce Willis. For his portrayal of Cole Sear, a psychic child, Osment won Saturn Award for Best Performance by a Younger Actor. He was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, becoming the second-youngest performer ever to receive an Academy nomination for a supporting role, but lost the final Oscar vote to Michael Caine (with whom he would later work, appearing together in Secondhand Lions). One of Osment's lines in The Sixth Sense, "I see dead people", became a popular catchphrase and is often repeated or parodied on television programs and in other media. He made three minor (voice-only) guest appearances on the animated TV series Family Guy in 2000 and 2001.

The 2000 Academy Awards ceremony honored another future co-star, Kevin Spacey, who, along with Helen Hunt, appeared in Osment's next film, Pay It Forward (2000). 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 for Best Younger Actor, and another critical acclaim. In reviewing the movie, critic Roger Ebert claimed that: "Osment, who is onscreen in almost every scene, is one of the best actors now working". In 2001, Osment starred in the Polish film, Edges of the Lord, as Romek. The movie was never released theatrically in the United States. Osment has lent his voice to animated films such as The Country Bears, The Hunchback of Notre Dame II and The Jungle Book 2. He returned to live action with the 2003 film, Secondhand Lions.

Osment lent his voice to the video game series, Kingdom Hearts, providing the voice of Sora, the series' main character, and also Vanitas, a villain resembling Sora. Osment also voiced the character of Takeshi Jinno, in the English version of the Immortal Grand Prix anime TV series.

He appeared in Home of the Giants, playing a high school journalist opposite Ryan Merriman and Danielle Panabaker. He subsequently worked on Montana Amazon as both an actor and executive producer. The film starred Olympia Dukakis and debuted at the Orlando and Big Apple Film Festivals in November 2010, winning Best Feature Film at the latter.

Osment made his Broadway debut at the Belasco Theatre in November 2008, playing the role of "Bobby", a young heroin addict, in a revival of David Mamet's American Buffalo; co-starring with John Leguizamo and Cedric the Entertainer. The show opened to mixed reviews, and a provisional statement was made on November 20, 2008, that it would close after the first week.

In 2010, Osment signed for a leading role in the comedy film Sex Ed from MPCA; he's to play a college graduate who wants to teach algebra, but ends up as a sex education teacher while a virgin himself. In January 2011, Entertainment Weekly reported that Osment had joined the cast of Sassy Pants, a comedy about a homeschooler with an over-bearing mother.

Variety reported on June 27, 2011 that Osment will star in Wake the Dead, a modern day retelling of the Frankenstein story, with production to begin the last quarter of 2011.