Osment began acting at the age of four, when he tried out for a
Pizza Hut commercial in a shopping mall. The commercial launched his career, and he landed his first television role later that year. As a young child his first film role was as
Forrest Gump's son, also named Forrest Gump, in the 1994
film of the same name as well as making a small appearance in
Mixed Nuts. He had roles in numerous TV series, including
Thunder Alley,
The Jeff Foxworthy Show and most notably the final season of
Murphy Brown, in which he replaced Dylan Christopher as Murphy's son Avery. He also made numerous guest appearances in various TV series including
The Larry Sanders Show,
Walker, Texas Ranger (as a child dying from
AIDS), Touched by an Angel,
Chicago Hope,
The Pretender, and as a child dying from
leukemia in the emotional episode "Angels and Blimps" of the late-1990s show
Ally McBeal.
Osment starred in
Bogus alongside
Whoopi Goldberg and
Gérard Depardieu, and appeared in the 1998
made-for-TV movie The Lake with
Yasmine Bleeth, as well as
I'll Remember April with future
The Sixth Sense co-star
Trevor Morgan. He first achieved stardom in 1999 when he appeared in the
blockbuster The Sixth Sense, co-starring
Bruce Willis. For this role, he won the
Saturn Award for
best young actor. He was also nominated for the
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor but lost to
Michael Caine (alongside whom he would later star in
Secondhand Lions). One of Osment's lines in
The Sixth Sense, "I see dead people" is often repeated or parodied on television programs and in other media. He also made three minor guest appearances on
Family Guy in 2000.
The 2000 Academy Awards ceremony honored another future co-star,
Best Actor Kevin Spacey, who, along with
Helen Hunt, appeared in Osment's next film,
Pay It Forward. The following year, he appeared in
Steven Spielberg's Artificial Intelligence: A.I., cementing his stature as one of the leading young actors in
Hollywood. This role earned him his second
Saturn Award. Also in 2001, Osment starred in the
Polish film,
Edges of the Lord, as Romek. The movie was never released theatrically in the United States. He has since provided voices for
The Country Bears and
The Jungle Book 2, and returned to live action with the 2003 film,
Secondhand Lions.
More recently, Osment was the voice of
Sora, the main protagonist of
The Walt Disney Company and
Square-Enix's Kingdom Hearts video game series, which has been extremely financially successful as well as generally well-received critically. He was also the voice of Takeshi Jinno, the main character of the
Immortal Grand Prix anime TV series. Osment's next film will be
Home of the Giants, playing a high school journalist opposite
Ryan Merriman and
Danielle Panabaker.
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