Haley Joel Osment: Actor restarting career after break for college

There were few juvenile actors more in demand during the early 2000s than Haley Joel Osment.

He earned a spot in film history for uttering one of the most quoted pieces of dialogue — “I see dead people” — in the 1999 film The Sixth Sense. Steven Spielberg picked Osment to star in A.I. Artificial Intelligence. And the boy won critical praise for Pay It Forward.

Toss in a an Oscar nomination when he was 12 and Osment was considered an A-list actor.

Then, he stepped away from the business.

In 2006, he left Hollywood to study experimental acting at New York University. Now, he’s back — starring in the Kevin Smith feature film Tusk, released over the weekend.

“It was a such a fulfilling time,” says Osment, 26, of his studies. “It was a great time for me, and New York continues to be my home. I knew being away from Los Angeles would mean they would forget about me, but I had to go out and look at what else there was in the world.”

He knows that he is essentially starting over.

“With Hollywood,” he said, “you’re only as good as your last project. But, now when I meet with directors person-to-person, they understand my reasons for going to college.”

Osment has worked mostly in small projects the past few years.

Tusk is the first of a string of feature films that should get him the type of exposure he had when he was a young actor.

In Tusk, he plays Teddy, a podcaster whose partner, Wallace (Justin Long), goes to Canada to interview a young man who became an online sensation.

The trip turns into a nightmare when Wallace is kidnapped and surgically transformed into a walrus.

Teddy and Wallace’s girlfriend (Genesis Rodriguez) head north to find out what happened.

Osment knew he wanted to be part of the outlandish tale as soon as he got the script.

“It had the names of Kevin Smith, Justin Long, Johnny Depp and Genesis Rodriguez. I knew I wanted to work with them, and I just hoped it would be a cool story,” he says. “I was willing to be in the movie as long as I didn’t have to do anything too strange or get naked.”

He and Long worked together for the opening podcast segment. That’s where he got to see Smith’s style of directing, which often means that the camera is in a fixed position and there are no quick edits.

“You have to be in the moment because the camera is always rolling to see how the scene will play out,” Osment says. “For the podcast scene, we had takes that were 20 to 30 minutes long.”