Haley Joel Osment
With 'The Sixth Sense,' my dad and I discussed how this was not so much a horror story as a story about communication. I understudied with my dad, in a sense. It made a huge difference.Collection: Communication
Acting is not acting. It isn't putting on a face and dancing around in a mask. It's believing that you are that character and playing him as if it were a normal day in the life of that character.
My mom teaches sixth grade and also taught first grade at one point. She's into dressing up and costumes and designing her own curriculum that way. She stayed home for about eight years with me and my sister when we were young before going back to teaching, so we had a lot of time with her. She taught us to read really early.
When I was five, I went on my first audition. It was for a Pizza Hut commercial.
I went to New York University to study experimental theatre in 2006 and was there pretty consistently until 2011.
A film like 'The Sixth Sense' burns an image of who you are into people's minds.
Just keep learning from the role and not just go for the money.
I'm going to try and model myself after Kurt Russell and Jodie Foster.
My favorite place is Central Park because you never know what you're going to find there. I also like that when I look out the windows of surrounding hotels, it's seems like I'm looking out over a forest.
I like normal stuff people fear - like spiders and heights. I'm frightened by the unknown, by things that are hard to figure out and get a grip on.
I try to keep away from being big-headed. That's what causes people to lose the acting thing. They start being commercial, and then they stink for the rest of their lives.
That professionalism comes from what I've watched people do on the set. I'm just trying to be as respectful to the environment, as they have been. I think I still act like a kid. I just try to be as professional as I can.
For me, choice is the most important thing because I'm going to be an adult actor pretty soon. So I've got to be choosing the right roles now so that by the time I get to that age there will be wide options available.
It's hard to act terrified when you have 200 crew members around you.
The best advice my dad ever gave me is that acting is believing. Acting is not acting. It isn't putting on a face and dancing around in a mask. It's believing that you are that character and playing him as if it were a normal day in the life of that character.
Kobe Bryant is my favorite basketball player. He takes risks. He goes for the shot. He isn't cautious with whatever he does.
People love to get scared. People want to see the worst thing that can happen.
My dad never told me that when you audition, you might not get the role. He wanted to wait until my first disappointment to tell me.
When I was a little kid, I loved imagining things. I'd go outside and put on a cape and just imagine I was somebody else.
There's so much to learn about acting and performance in general... I mean, acting is a very complex art, and there are a lot more theories and methods and techniques to it than I think anybody would think.
I really don't care if people know who I am or what's said about me.
You always have to avoid working for the sake of putting yourself out there.
I've never had a MySpace or a Facebook page. I avoid that entirely.
My parents never got carried away with the extraneous elements of being in the business.
I would be a terrible person to be in a relationship with because I'm either sleeping or at the theater.
The notion of self-care for people who have hundreds of millions of dollars, it doesn't seem like a radical thing.
I'm not a stand-up comedian. I'm not an improv person or anything, but I've always been a fan of that stuff.
It was kind of good that I wasn't doing the Hollywood high life and stuff like that when I was 18, 19, 20, 21.
What attracted me to New York was there was an anonymity that I couldn't always have in Los Angeles, and it was easier to blend in there. The more successful you are, the less you are able to do that.
It's kind of comfortable portraying characters who are kind of unsavoury and not so nice. That can be refreshing sometimes.
Having that college experience and a social life that didn't revolve around Hollywood was absolutely crucial.
I've done some really off-the-wall stuff and stuff that people might not expect. That's one way to work through people's expectations of you.
My parents were both born in Birmingham, Alabama, and come from large Catholic families with lots of Michaels, Marks, and Patricks, so they wanted to choose two names that I don't think you could find anywhere else in the family tree: Haley and Joel.
A script like 'The Sixth Sense' is fun to read: It's so well-written, and you get a vivid sense of what's going to be onscreen.
I had a flip phone until I was 25, and I didn't use social media until that age, either.
With my dad coming from a theatre tradition, there was a lot of preparation before auditions. Not just in terms of saying the lines correctly but a process of entering into what it was all about.
What I like least about acting is that when you're only in one place, you're missing the other part of life.
I try to steer away from doing something that's just commercial instead of sticking to a good script.
One challenge in this industry is that you adopt a certain look for a movie, and then people don't get to see the movie for a year!
People hear the examples of kids who work when they're young, have bad experiences, and then have a rough life after that, but a lot of it is just about the people around you.
Every character I approach, from 'Forrest Gump' all the way up to 'The Spoils Before Dying,' has a different set of requirements and always fascinates me.
When you get lucky, as I did getting to work on a series of amazing films, one of the drawbacks career-wise is that the image of you at 10 or 12 or whatever is burned into people's minds for a long time.
My parents are from the South - they were both born in Birmingham - so my dad saw R.E.M. really early on when they were playing college stuff in Athens. He had a bunch of their cassettes from the '80s, and when I was 8, 9, or 10, those were the sort of things that were around the cassette player in the living room.
Actually, 'Die Hard' was the first movie I ever saw in the theater. When I was a newborn, my parents were going stir-crazy in the house, and they put me in the bassinet, and I slept through 'Die Hard' in the theater as an infant.
Comedy can be harder because if you aren't making the audience laugh, they're going to turn on you quicker. They'll go along with mediocre drama more than they'll go along with mediocre comedy.
One of the cool things about getting to audition for things on short notice is that it teaches you to memorize efficiently. So I've never been afraid of getting text down quickly.
I think a lot of actors will tell you that playing a villain can be more fun than playing the straight and narrow good guy.
I went to the Experimental Theater Wing at NYU and wrote and directed a small amount of stuff there.
When you're a kid, and you grow up, it takes some time for people to associate you with more things other than that initial thing.
I try to keep away from being bigheaded. That's what causes people to lose the acting thing. They start being commercial, and then they stink the rest of their life. But there are several respected adult actors who were child actors that started very young. I'm going to try to model myself after Kurt Russell and Jodie Foster. Just keep learning from the role and not just go for the money.Collection: Children