Actor -
Keeping His Feet on the Ground

In an international digital video conference last November, a questioner in Minsk asked the 16-year-old American actor Haley Joel Osment whether he had a driver's license and, if he did, what kind of car he drove. Osment answered that he drove "the family Saturn, which is a well-made American car." His response was in keeping with the portrait that emerges in the interview of a young professional who has enjoyed extraordinary success almost from the time he stepped in front of a camera.

Osment was four years old when he persuaded his mother to let him audition for a Pizza Hut commercial. (It may not have taken much effort to persuade her, since Haley's father was a professional actor.) Osment got the job, and it wasn't too much later that he landed his first film role, playing Forrest Gump's son in a movie that was a critical hit and a commercial success.

The kind of phenomenal early success in the film industry that Osment has experienced can be a recipe for personal disaster. Fame, financial security, and life in a Hollywood bubble don't always add up to the development of a mature, well-grounded individual. But Osment seems determined, with the help of his parents, to become just that. Although he is tutored when he is shooting a movie, when he's not filming he attends secondary school at home in Los Angeles. He plays sports. He hangs out with his friends, "who don't take the acting part of my life too seriously. ... It's not a big part of our friendship." He's an active member of his secondary school drama department, which is currently working on "The Laramie Project." And when he graduates, he plans to attend college. He'll study film, of course, but he also intends to study history and politics.

In an hour-long conference with English-speaking students from Belarus, Osment's poise before the camera was to be expected — he's an actor, after all— but not necessarily his ability to articulate the craft of the profession to which he has devoted himself. He recognizes his good fortune: "When art is your work," Osment said, "you really don't end up working at all." And that is because, he went on to explain, you care so much about what you do. Acting, Osment said, has to do with becoming someone else, and believing it. "The best part of acting is making that transformation into another person," he told the students in Minsk. "That's really what the essence of acting is, [it's] believing that you are someone who you are not." Not coincidentally, for Osment, the hardest part of acting is believing "what your character is living." If it works, if you can do it, you wind up creating what he described as "an alternative reality."

One questioner wondered why so many actors seem to burn out or disappear after making a splash as a child actor. Osment seemed to be aware of the danger of that happening and converted it to a challenge. His goal, he said, is to continue to improve his acting. Each time he portrays a character, he strives for a better performance, building on what he has done in the past and strengthening his art as he moves from role to role. Having played so many child parts, he looks forward to being able, eventually, to play "a villain."

As for the fame that comes along with success in the movie business, Osment told his interlocutors in Minsk that an actor should first and foremost respect his fans. "Without their support, you wouldn't be working, " he said. Still, he recognizes that celebrity can be a distraction from what really matters, which is the work, and the art in the work. He appears to mean it, and to know what he is saying, when he tells people that when it comes to making films, what's important is "the work on the set."

If there is such a thing as equilibrium in life for a famous young actor, Haley Joel Osment seems to be close to achieving it. One way or another, his future lies in film. While he will continue to act, he said, after college he hopes to explore other aspects of moviemaking, including writing and directing. In the meantime he'll keep working, and studying, and playing rock and roll music with some friends. As he does all that, the odds seem good that he will do so with his feet firmly planted on the ground. — Mark Jacobs

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