Why This Child Actor Returned to LA After Leaving for 15 Years

Published: August 21, 2024

Why This Child Actor Returned to LA After Leaving for 15 Years

By Movieguide® Contributor

Haley Joel Osment explained why he left Hollywood in the first place and the change that has inspired him to return to the industry now.

“My parents used to say when I first started out in this industry, ‘If it’s ever not fun, you can quit tomorrow,’” Osment told E! News. “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 a career in life.”

“The answer has always been yes at all these junctures,” he continued. “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.”

Osment rose to fame in the late ’90s and early 2000s through memorable roles such as Young Forrest in FORREST GUMP, John Henry in TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL, Cole Sear in THE SIXTH SENSE, Trevor McKinney in PAY IT FORWARD and Walter in SECONDHAND LIONS.

By the time he was going off to college, he was all too happy to study in New York to get away from the culture that pervaded L.A. at the time.

“Those were pretty tense years in terms of how celebrity was in Los Angeles,” Osment said. “[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.”

Fortunately, in the years since he left, Osment has seen social media engagement replace this repulsive part of the industry. This is a large reason why, in recent years, he has taken more and more roles that bring him back to Hollywood.

“We’re in a different era than we were,” he said. “It’s an interesting shift in dynamics.”

“At this point, I’m comfortable with it. 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,” Osment continued. “I resisted it for so long, and how it’s like, ‘Hey, it’s fun to do some posts.’”

Osment’s social media does just that, as his Instagram, for example, is full of personal posts alongside promotions for his latest projects.

“For younger actors today, I’m always really impressed with them being able to manage the TikTok-Instagarm-social media landscape,” Osment added. “That’s not something I ever really had to deal with at that age.”