Haley Joel Osment Biography

TV came knocking immediately. There was Lies Of The Heart, a superior tele-movie starring Jennie Garth about a 16-year-old wife accused of killing her abusive husband. Then came the sitcom Thunder Alley, where Haley featured as the cute grandson of retired stock car racer Edward Asner. This led in turn to the part of Jeff Foxworthy's son Matt in another excellent but short-lived sitcom, The Jeff Foxworthy Show. Wherever Young Artists awards were held, Haley was on the short-list. He was the ideal son for any long-suffering TV parent, cute enough to melt viewers' hearts, bright enough to deliver his lines naturally, and possessed of a natural comic timing. By 1997, he had replaced Dyllan Christopher as Candice Bergen's kid Avery in Murphy Brown, a well-received series about a reporter for FYI News Network that featured guest spots from the likes of Jane Leeves, Paul Reubens and Lily Tomlin.

And there were movies too. Having started off in one of the biggest hits of all time, Haley had to go downhill. But his quality control was sound. First came a small role in Mixed Nuts, a clever, good-hearted comedy about a crisis hot-line, directed by Nora Ephron (of Sleepless In Seattle fame) and starring Steve Martin and Madeline Kahn, with cameos from Juliette Lewis, Adam Sandler and Garry Shandling (who'd invite Haley to appear on his Larry Sanders Show). Next came Haley's first lead part, in Bogus, helmed by Norman Jewison, legendary director of In The Heat Of The Night and Rollerball. Here, Haley played the son of a circus performer killed in a car crash. Sent to live with his mum's career-obsessed foster-sister Whoopi Goldberg, he pines for his old, exciting life and invents a flamboyant imaginary companion, Gerard Depardieu.

Sadly, neither Mixed Nuts nor Bogus were hits. Nor indeed was Haley's next project, For Better Or Worse, directed by Jason Alexander - better known to the world as Seinfeld's bitter buddy George Costanza. For two years, when he wasn't attending school in Glendale, Haley concentrated on high-quality TV movies. There was Last Stand At Saber River, based on a story by Elmore Leonard, where Haley was the son of Tom Selleck, a Confederate soldier returning from the Civil War to battle for his homestead. There was The Lake, a creepy thriller starring Yasmine Bleeth, and The Ransom Of Red Chief, a comedy western originally penned by O. Henry, where Haley played the kidnapped son of a banker whose establishment is the target of desperate hobo Christopher Lloyd.

There was one body-blow. Haley was turned down for the part of young Anakin Skywalker in The Phantom Menace. But it didn't stop him, for now came The Sixth Sense. Haley remembers being made to feel supremely at ease by co-star Bruce Willis and writer/director M. Night Shyamalan. The three would even play golf together, on a specially-constructed basement driving range. In return, Haley gave everything. Shyamalan recalls hearing a strange banging just before he yelled Action for the scene where Haley, as Cole Sear, enters the kitchen, terrified out of his wits. The director discovered the noise was being made by Osment, slamming himself into the walls to appear appropriately shaken up.

The Sixth Sense was, of course, a monster hit and Haley found himself the 8th youngest ever nominee for a competitive Oscar. He was disappointed by the result, but Michael Caine, winner for The Cider House Rules, was kind enough to specifically mention the lad in his acceptance speech. Undeterred, Haley continued to add to his absurdly impressive CV. Next he was Trevor McKinney in Pay It Forward, a schoolkid asked by a teacher to make a plan to change the world and put it into action. He decides that, rather than repay favours, he will pass them on to more people, and thus changes the life of both his teacher and his mum - Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt. Of the shoot, Spacey remembers Haley being unusually sensitive to his fellow actors needs. Haley also appeared in Ally McBeal, rending hearts as a dying child who tries to sue God.

Now, Haley would provide a series of vocal performances for high-budget cartoons, including Edwurd Fudwupper Fibbed Big, with John Cleese, Catherine O'Hara and his younger sister, Emily Jordan Osment, also an actor (father Eugene had also had small roles in several Haley projects, including Pay It Forward). But the big movies kept coming, and now there was Steven Spielberg's AI: Artificial Intelligence, where Haley played David Swinton, an android seeking humanity in a mid-21st Century world of melted ice-caps and submerged coastal cities. Attempting to portray a near-human machine was Haley's sternest task yet, as he starred alongside Jude Law and Frances O'Connor (at the Oscars, Haley had actually asked Julianne Moore to participate, but her schedule did not permit it).

Eugene Osment has been accused of pushing Haley too hard. But his son disagrees, saying he has not suffered at all. He stills attends school when not filming, and receives tuition on-set when he is. The ever-present Eugene, furthermore, being an actor, helps his son understand the roles he's playing. Not that he needs much help. Haley is ludicrously mature, his favourite band being REM, his favourite authors including Edgar Allan Poe, and his role models being General Patton and Franklin D. Roosevelt (he may well become President, once Will Smith has served his terms). In other ways, though, he's still very much a kid. Considering the role of Harry Potter, he decided against it, feeling the books should not be filmed. It would have been a big pay-day, Haley now receiving $2 million per picture. But, bizarrely, he possesses an artistic integrity unexpected in one so young. And it's this that should prevent him becoming the next Macauley Culkin.

Next for Haley comes Edges Of The Lord, where he will play Romek, a young Jewish boy concealed from the Nazis by a poor family of Catholic farmers. Then, it's said, he'll be back on top of his profession, with Tom Cruise in Speilberg's Minority Report. Just into his teens and already onto his second Spielberg. He must be the luckiest boy alive.

Dominic Wills