Haley Joel Osment Reveals Why He Left Hollywood After Having Huge Success as a Child Star

Haley Joel Osment found fame when he starred in Forrest Gump when he was just 5 years old. He went on to star in The Sixth Sense, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Secondhand Lions and more before he seemingly stepped away from the spotlight for a while. He eventually came back and was recently seen in the film Blink Twice. So, why did he take a break from acting?

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The 36-year-old explained, “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 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. 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.”

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Another reason he stepped away was the difficult parts of fame. He added, “Those were pretty tense years in terms of how celebrity was in Los Angeles.” He said that there was “this very predatory, aggressive kind of tabloid engagement with certain celebrities. I remember being very happy to not be making my home in Los Angeles at that time.” Osment moved to New York City for a while before eventually going back to Los Angeles, where he said the paparazzi culture isn’t quite as bad as it was.

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While he used to maintain a more private life, Osment said that he now enjoys posting on social media from time to time to keep up with his fans. He shared, “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.'”

As far as upcoming projects go, it looks like he will appear in a cameo in the second season of the Addams Family spinoff Wednesday in 2025. What was your favorite role of his?

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