Former child star Haley Joel Osment, who shot to fame in 1999 after his portrayal of a psychic child in “The Sixth Sense,” blamed the media for his decision to take a break from acting.
In an interview with E! News, the actor shared that the first few years following the success of “The Sixth Sense” were “pretty tense years” in terms of how celebrities were seen, particularly in Los Angeles. He recalled there being “this very predatory, aggressive kind of tabloid engagement with certain celebrities.”
It was around that time, in 2006, that the Los Angeles native was enrolled at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
“I remember being very happy to not be making my home in Los Angeles at that time,” he said.
Osment, 36, lived in New York for about 15 years before returning to Los Angeles, the epicenter of the industry. Things have since “mellowed out a bit” in his hometown when it comes to the toxic paparazzi culture he was faced with as a child star.
“We’re in a different era than we were,” he said.
Privacy is one of Osment’s issues with being in the limelight, and he admitted it took “a long time to figure out how to navigate social media” as a public figure. He eventually joined Instagram to counter a number of fake accounts claiming to be him.
“It’s an interesting shift in dynamics,” he said, noting, “At this point, I’m comfortable with it.”
He added that “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.’”
Osment said he’s glad he missed the online era.
“When I came up in this industry, the Internet was around but it wasn’t so omnipresent that it is today,” he said. “So for younger actors today, I’m always really impressed with them being able to manage the TikTok-Instagram-social media landscape, because that’s not something I ever really had to deal with at that age.”
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