Sixth Sense child star Haley Joel Osment, 36, reveals why he took a 15-year hiatus from acting

Haley Joel Osment opened up about his long hiatus from acting and his return to Hollywood after 15 years.

The 36-year-old actor, who was a star as a child, candidly spoke about why he initially decided to take a break and reflected on becoming famous at a young age.

He will next star in Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut Blink Twice, but before that he rose to fame for his role in the 1999 psychological thriller The Sixth Sense, opposite Bruce Willis. He also showed his support for his former co-star when he decided to take a step back from acting.

After receiving an Oscar nomination at age 11 and appearing in a number of notable films, he decided to take a break from acting and moved to New York City in 2006 to study at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Osment told E! News on Sunday: ‘When I first started in this industry, my parents always said, “If it ever stops being fun, you can quit tomorrow.”

“When I was in college, I went to college to study theater and thought carefully about whether I wanted to make it my career,” he recalls.

“The answer has always been yes to all of those moments,” Osment continued, noting that he made the choices despite the fact that he had always had a passion for acting.

“It’s still a job I really enjoy, despite all the uncertainty and the difficulty of planning your life three to six months ahead,” he explains.

Osment, who was five when he made his film debut in 1994’s Forrest Gump, also remembered the Hollywood landscape when he decided to take a break and go to college.

“Those were some pretty tense years in terms of celebrity in Los Angeles,” he said.

He noted that he saw “a very predatory, aggressive form of tabloid involvement with certain celebrities.”

“I remember being really glad I wasn’t living in Los Angeles at the time,” he added.

In 2006, he was also given a suspended sentence after pleading guilty to driving under the influence and marijuana possession.

Around the same time, his younger sister Emily Osment also got her big role in Hannah Montana. He left Hollywood to go to college in New York City.

Osment said he noticed a change in Hollywood after his return.

He noted that his hometown of Los Angeles has “mellowed out a little bit” when it comes to the paparazzi culture he experienced as a teenager.

“We live in a different era than before,” he said.

“It’s an interesting shift in dynamics,” he said of his handling of social media as a public figure who also prioritized his privacy.

After finally creating an Instagram account to counter the fake accounts posing as himself, he admitted that it took him “a long time to figure out how to navigate social media” and that he credits content that was “voluntarily posted online.”

“At this point, I’m comfortable with it,” Osment said. “In this very large media environment, it’s the way to promote your projects and keep people informed about what you’re doing within the balance of reasonable privacy. I resisted it for so long, and now I’m like, ‘Hey, it’s fun to do some posting.'”

He also praised the way younger actors are finding fame in an age of ubiquitous social media.

“When I was coming into this industry, the internet was already there, but it wasn’t as ubiquitous as it is now,” he said. “So for younger actors today, I’m always really impressed with how well they can navigate the social media landscape, because that’s something I never really had to deal with at that age.”

Osment will soon be seen in Blink Twice, starring opposite leads Channing Tatum and Naomi Ackie in Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut.

In the upcoming thriller, he plays Tom, a morally malleable, struggling actor. He says he hasn’t had “that much interaction” with these characters in real life. A man who is “kind of pathetic” but who is trying to “become a better person and optimize his life.”

Blink Twice follows cocktail actress Frida (Ackie), who meets tech billionaire Slater King (Tatum) at his fundraising gala.

During their meeting, he invites her to join him and his friends on his private island for a hedonistic getaway.

As the logline goes, wild nights soon turn into sunny days. However, when strange things start happening, Frida must uncover the truth if she hopes to make it out alive.

The all-star cast also includes Adria Arjona, Alia Shawkat, Levon Hawke, Simon Rex, Christian Slater, Liz Caribal, Geena Davis, Trew Mullen and many others.

Blink Twice premieres in theaters on Friday, August 23.