Haley Joel Osment shot to fame after his iconic turn as a child psychic in the 1999 film The Sixth Sense alongside Bruce Willis, a role which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor at just 11 years old.
Who could forget that angelic face uttering the words, "I see dead people"?
Film critic Roger Ebert called him "one of the best actors now working", and his role in Steven Spielberg's A.I. Artificial Intelligence cemented his status as a massive talent.
Despite his stratospheric success, Haley Joel quietly slipped away from the spotlight in his teen years; he revealed to E News why he left Hollywood at the height of his fame, explaining that the tabloid culture of the 2000s was "predatory" and "aggressive".
"I remember being very happy to not be making my home in Los Angeles at that time," he told the publication.
Child stars are often the fascination of people worldwide and are the darlings of the media- until they're not. Stars like Amanda Bynes and Lindsay Lohan spring to mind; struggling with their fame and surrounded by the wrong people, it was easy for them to slip into drugs and alcohol to cope.
© Getty ImagesHowever, Haley Joel's parents had a different approach to their son's fame. "My parents used to say when I first started out in this industry, 'If it's ever not fun, you can quit tomorrow,'" he told E News.
"And when I got to be college age, I got to go off and study theater 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," he continued. "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."
© Maureen DonaldsonHe attended New York University in 2007 and became a prominent voice actor for roles like the Kingdom Hearts gaming series and the Immortal Grand Prix anime series.
According to the Forrest Gump actor, he spent the next 15 years honing his craft and finding himself outside of Hollywood.
Over the years, he had minor roles in projects like Silicon Valley and Yoga Hosers, and now the actor is making a tentative return to his roots under the spotlight.
© Steve GranitzIn 2019, the 36-year-old joined Zac Efron and Lily Collins in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, the Netflix hit about serial killer Ted Bundy. He also appeared in Wednesday, alongside Jenna Ortega, and in The Kominsky Method with Michael Douglas
Now, he is a series regular on Amazon's The Boys and Hulu's Future Man, and will feature in thriller Blink Twice.
Upon returning to Hollywood in recent years, Haley Joel noted to E News how different the landscape is now compared to when he was starting out in the industry. "When I came up in this industry, the internet was around, but it wasn't so omnipresent that it is today," he said.
© Olivia Wong"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."
He now dabbles in social media and explained that he is "comfortable with it" as a promotion tool. "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.'"
