He no longer sees dead people, and there is nothing artificial about his intelligence.

Haley Joel Osment, star of ghost thriller "The Sixth Sense" and science fiction drama "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" has grown up.

The 15-year-old's new movie "Secondhand Lions," which debuts in theaters nationwide Friday, is about a boy who, while living with two cantankerous uncles, learns to be a man.

Osment himself is no longer the 6-year-old who appeared in Forrest Gump in 1994. He's a high school sophomore learning to drive and trying to decide what college to attend.

"The movie shows a character that is completely appropriate for what I'm going through right now as an actor, transitioning from younger roles into older roles. This film really represents a gateway into that period," Osment told Reuters.
He said winning plum movie roles hasn't been easy in recent years because he has been growing older with all the physical changes that implies. His voice has deepened, for one.

'There is such a rapid change'

"Secondhand Lions," he said, sat around for two years while he aged naturally for the role.

"Between being a kid and an adult ... there is such a rapid change that there aren't a lot of character options available," he said. "Had (this movie) been any later, I would have been too old, so the transition happened just right."
In "Secondhand Lions," Osment plays a young teenager, Walter, a shy kid who doesn't stray far from his single mom's side until she leaves him with two wealthy great uncles in rural Texas, Garth and Hub, played by Michael Caine and Robert Duvall, respectively.

His mom, Mae (Kyra Sedgwick), abandons him while she heads off to Las Vegas to find herself a husband. She tells Walter his job is to find the old uncles' money and make them like him so he will inherit it when they die.
The first problem Walter encounters is that nobody really knows how much cash crusty old Garth and Hub have stashed away and whether, indeed, they really have it.

They shoot at every salesman who comes near their door, and when they do buy, their tastes are eccentric -- a biplane and an old circus lion, to name two.
But Walter soon learns they do have money, piles of it.

The pair earned their cash in far off adventures in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, where after a stint in the French Foreign Legion, Garth and Hub hit it big in the oil business.

As Walter confronts them with their secretive past, the uncles are drawn out of their shells and eventually open up to the boy. They become father figures, and teach Walter what it takes to stand up for himself and be a man.

"There haven't been any times when I've had to stand up against something," said Osment about himself. But he added that he knows those days are coming, and coming soon.

Picking parts

Osment admits he's been "lucky" as a child actor by working with the likes of Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt, M. Night Shyamalan and Bruce Willis.

He knows Hollywood's spotlight can dim quickly if he doesn't pick the right parts. He believes he must avoid being stereotyped as one particular type of character, such as the boy who sees dead people from "Sixth Sense."

"It's really an important part of my career right now to find roles that are getting progressively older. ... 'Secondhand Lions' really aided that process, and makes me transition into being an adult actor. That's where I'm going," he said.

He added that in the future, he might like to write or direct, but that for now, he is concentrating on one role at a time and staying active in high school when he's not working.

Osment runs cross country, plays golf and soccer, and participates in his school's drama department. He recently landed his first role in a school play -- an Agatha Christie mystery. He played the butler.