Haley Joel Osment life and biography

Haley Joel Osment is an American actor. After a series of roles in television and film during the 1990s, including a small part in Forrest Gump playing Tom Hanks' title character's son, Osment rose to fame with his performance as Cole Sear in M. Night Shyamalan's thriller film The Sixth Sense that earned him a nomination for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He subsequently appeared in leading roles in several high-profile Hollywood films including Steven Spielberg's A.I. Artificial Intelligence and Mimi Leder's Pay it Forward. He made his Broadway debut in 2008 in a revival of American Buffalo, co-starring with John Leguizamo and Cedric the Entertainer.

Osment was born in Los Angeles, California; the son of Theresa Osment (née Seifert), a teacher, and Michael Eugene Osment, a theater and film actor, both natives of Alabama. Osment was raised Roman Catholic. He has one sister, four years younger, actress and singer-songwriter Emily Osment. Osment's parents described his childhood as a "good old-fashioned Southern upbringing," and his father said that when Osment was learning to speak, he deliberately avoided using baby talk when communicating with his son.

Following the success of The Sixth Sense with the well-intended but fatally flawed feel-good failure Pay It Forward, Osment escaped relatively unscathed as critics recognized the young actor's exceptional performance in what was otherwise a flop with critics and audiences alike. Imagination was the key to Osment's next project: director Steven Spielberg's long-anticipated, much-hyped A.I. An elaborately futuristic tale of an android that aspires to experience human emotion, A.I. was the first and only collaboration of two of the most influential filmmakers of the 20th century, the late Stanley Kubrick (who conceived the story based on Brian Aldiss' short story Supertoys Last All Summer Long) and Spielberg. In addition to appearing onscreen, Osment lent his voice to a number of animated films in 2000 and 2001, including the Disney sequels The Hunchback of Notre Dame II and The Jungle Book II. After once again providing voice work for the comedy musical The Country Bears, Osment returned to the screen body intact with Secondhand Lions in 2003. Cast as an intorverted youngster whose irresponsible mother sends him off to spend his summer with his eccentric uncles in Texas, Osment's onscreen abilities were key in making his character's transformation from withdrawn child to responsible young man believable.

Osment was a student at Flintridge Preparatory School in La Cañada, California. As a child, he was talented in many sports, including basketball, football, wrestling, and golf.

Filmography:

2009 : Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days
2010 : Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep ; Montana Amazon
2011 : Kingdom Hearts Re:coded ; Sassy Pants
2012 : Wake the Dead

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