Now, this is a twist that everyone saw coming: Haley Joel Osment loved working with Bruce Willis on M. Night Shyamalan’s 1999 film, The Sixth Sense. Spoiler alert! The supernatural horror movie, which centers around a young boy named Cole (Osment), who sees dead people, is well-known for its incredible, jaw-dropping twist ending. And as the psychological thriller continues to celebrate its 25th anniversary, Osment recalls how Willis would call him up to check in and leave thoughtful messages for his co-star. Osment said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly:
“I heard from him a lot after it came out in those subsequent years. He’d leave voicemails at the house from time to time, just checking in. He would just call out of the blue, so sometimes it was in the lead up before travel. We went to Japan together twice, if I remember correctly, to open Sixth Sense in different cities.”
Osment was nominated for an Academy Award (Best Actor in a Supporting Role | 2000 Oscars) at the age of 11, but he ended up losing to Michael Caine — who would be knighted in November of that same year — for his portrayal in The Cider House Rules. Osment continued by saying of Willis during the same interview (below):
“So, he would call ahead of that, and then sometimes I would just come home from school and the answering machine would be blinking, and it’d be him going like, ‘Hey, Haley Joel. Just saying hi.’ I need to find those old answering tapes. I know we preserved those. I know his daughters a little bit, but I have not spoken to him since the news of his health in recent years.”
Haley Joel Osment Says ‘It Was Fantastic’ Working with Bruce Willis
As now 36-year-old Haley Joel Osment reflects on The Sixth Sense, it seems only natural to appreciate that the child actor actually enjoyed working with one of Hollywood’s A-list talents. Certainly, Osment and co-star Bruce Willis’ on-screen chemistry was undeniable. So, it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that the two thespians got along swimmingly while working on M. Might Shyamalan’s masterpiece. Osment also told EW (below):
“It was fantastic. I had worked with Tom Hanks before on Forrest Gump and other big-name actors, but at that point I was old enough to have seen a lot of Bruce’s movies, which added a lot of excitement to it. And that’s something that lasts your entire career, where you get to work with people who you’ve enjoyed watching in other things.”
Osment continued by saying during the same sit-down:
“And it made a huge impression on me because that was the first gigantic celebrity that I’d worked with at an age where I was aware of his stardom. And he did everything in such a cool way, and had such charisma, and was the person that you want on set setting the tone for the sort of movie we were making, because things usually revolve around the No. 1 on the call sheet. It was a script that we all cared about so much and put so much effort into, and Bruce led the way on that.”
In honor of the film’s 25th anniversary, and to celebrate the spookiest of all seasons, The Sixth Sense will be available to stream on Hulu this October, and M. Night Shyamalan’s deliciously “twisted” supernatural phenomenon can also be seen on Max, at the time of this writing. Sadly, though, The Sixth Sense isn’t slated to appear during AMC’s FearFest this year.