Haley Joel Osment reflects on early fame: 'I had to think really hard about whether I wanted it...'
'The Sixth Sense' star Haley Joel Osment still "really enjoys" his Hollywood career - despite all the "uncertainty" that comes with it.
Haley Joel Osment still "really enjoys" his Hollywood career - despite all the "uncertainty" that comes with it.
The 36-year-old actor - became the second-youngest performer ever to receive an Academy nomination for a supporting role for his role in the 1999 thriller opposite Bruce Willis before briefly being considered for the title role in the 'Harry Potter' franchise - wound down his career for a period of time in his teens so he could go to college and has had to make some "really hard" decisions about what he wants in life.
He told E! News: "My parents used to say when I first started out in this industry, 'If it's ever not fun, you can quit tomorrow. And when I got to be college age, I got to go off and study theatre and really think hard about whether I wanted to do this as my career in life. The answer has always been yes at all these junctures. It's still a job that I really enjoy, despite all the uncertainty and the difficulty of being able to plan your life three to six months out.
The 'Blink Twice' star admitted that his early fame took place "those were pretty tense years in terms of how celebrity was in Los Angeles" and was "very happy to not be making [his] home" in the Californian city at that time as he reflected on the "shift" to social media these days.
He said: "It's an interesting shift in dynamics. At this point I'm comfortable with it," Osment said. And "in this very large media environment, it's the way to promote your projects and help people keep up to date on what you're doing within the balance of reasonable privacy. I resisted it for so long and now it's like, 'Hey, it's fun to do some posts.
"When I came up in this industry, the Internet was around but it wasn't so omnipresent that it is today. "So for younger actors today, I'm always really impressed with them being able to manage the TikTok-Instagram-social media landscape, because that's not something I ever really had to deal with at that age."
