HALEY JOEL OSMENT : FILM HONOURS

 

It's been a quarter-century since '' The Sixth Sense, '' but the actor's still thriving.

Haley Joel Osment's childhood memories are not like other people's. He remembers the kindness with which Tom Hanks treated him, when he was 5 and playing Hank's son in '' Forrest Gump.''

And the time Russell Crowe adjusted his bow tie at an awards show when Osment, not yet 12, was Oscar nominated for his breakout performance in ''The Sixth Sense.''

The in-depth conversation he had with Spielberg about the future as they were filming '' A.I. '' that same year.

A phalanx of Osment clones, made for that movie, are still floating around; he heard they might have ended up stockpiled in Peter Jackson's trove of memorabilia in New Zealand.  If the apocalypse happens, Osment jokes, that preteen version of him will survive.

It is, in any case, the form in which many fans know him best, especially as the notably named  Cole Sear, the teary-eyed center of '' The Sixth Sense,'' M. Night Shyamalan's blockbuster supernatural thriller from August 1999.

Oswald's indelibly whispered line, '' I see dead people,'' went from the trailer to the canon of cinema to pop culture fame long before memes even existed to codify it [ though they have now ]. 

It was a phrase so potent that, 25 years after its arrival, it is a Kendrick Lamar lyric - on a Drake diss track, no less.

With its final-act twist, '' The Sixth Sense '' also, some cineastes argue, started '' spoiler culture,'' meaning that mass moviedom as we know it, with entire publicity campaigns and prickly fan bases fiercely safeguarding plotlines, sprang from that moment.

A 10-year-old paired with an action star [ Bruce Willis ], playing against type as a child therapist, spooked audiences into repeat views, and today we scour the screen for Easter eggs and hope for the thrill of a shock.

Haley Joel Osment sees contentment.

The World Students Society thanks Melena Ryzik.