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Haley Joel Osment

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File:Movie i see dead people.jpg
Osment in The Sixth Sense, 1999

Haley Joel Osment (born April 10, 1988) is an Academy Award-nominated American child actor, perhaps best known for his role in the 1999 film The Sixth Sense.

Biography

Early life

Osment was born in Los Angeles, California, to Eugene Osment and Theresa Seifert. He began acting at the age of four, when he tried out for a Pizza Hut commercial in a shopping mall. The commercial launched his career, and he landed his first television role later that year. As a younger child he played Forrest Gump's son, also named Forrest Gump, in the 1994 film of the same name. He had roles in numerous TV series, including Walker, Texas Ranger (as a child dying from AIDS), Murphy Brown, and most notably The Jeff Foxworthy Show. He also played a dying child in the emotional episode "Angels and Blimps" of the late-1990s show Ally McBeal.

Career

Osment 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 (whom he would later star alongside in Secondhand Lions). Osment then appeared in Steven Spielberg's AI: Artificial Intelligence, cementing his stature as one of the leading young actors in Hollywood. This role got him his second Saturn Award. He has since appeared in several films, including Pay It Forward and Secondhand Lions. Osment also provided the voice for Sora, the main protagonist of The Walt Disney Company and Square-Enix's Kingdom Hearts series of video games. He is also the voice of Takeshi Jin, the main character of the Immortal Grand Prix anime TV series. He starred in Bogus alongside Whoopi Goldberg and Gérard Depardieu.

Haley portrayed Dylan Hydecker in the 1998 made-for-TV movie The Lake with Yasmine Bleeth.

One of Osment's lines in The Sixth Sense, "I see dead people," is often repeated on television programs and punned in other media. For example, one creature in the Blizzard game Warcraft 3 says, "I eat dead people".

Osment attributes his success as an actor to his parents.

Personal life

Osment currently resides in Los Angeles with his parents and sister, Emily (four years his junior), who is also an actress. He is a student at Flintridge Preparatory School in La Canada, California.

Early on the morning of July 20, 2006, Osment was hospitalized after he apparently lost control of his car while heading to his Los Angeles area home, authorities said. Osment was driving a 1995 Saturn about 1 a.m. when the car collided with a brick pillar and flipped, said Los Angeles County sheriff's Lt. Greg Sisneros. [1]

Selected filmography

Year Title Role Notes
2006 Home of the Giants Robert "Gar" Gartland
2003 Secondhand Lions Walter
The Jungle Book 2 Mowgli voice
2002 The Country Bears Beary Barrington voice
2001 A.I. David
2000 Pay It Forward Trevor McKinney
1999 The Sixth Sense Cole Sear
1996 Bogus Albert Franklin
1994 Mixed Nuts Little Boy
Forrest Gump Forrest Gump Jr.