He used to see dead people. Now Haley Joel Osment is dead-set on not being seen as a child star.

The kid who shot to fame with 1999's "The Sixth Sense" is 15, and co-starring with Michael Caine and Robert Duvall in the family film "Secondhand Lions," opening tomorrow.

"The question is, What do people think of when they see you?" Osment says. "This is the age where it gets the hardest, the time leading up to 18. You don't want people to be distracted by [your growing up]."

That could be a challenge, since Osment became a huge star at 11 with "Sixth Sense."

A later movie, Steven Spielberg's "A.I.," perfectly cast him as a robot boy who yearned to be real.

With his voice now deeper and his face less cherubic, Osment is hoping people see him in a different way after the "Lions" role.

He plays a 1960s preteen learning about life from his roustabout Texas uncles.

"Hopefully, people will concentrate on the movie and not me," he says. "That's one reason why I have to do movies [at this age], so that people don't reject it as I become older."

Osment was born in Los Angeles in 1988. His parents - Eugene, a stage actor, and Theresa, a teacher - sent Haley to his first commercial audition at age 5.

He soon got roles on TV as the son of Murphy Brown and in movies as the spawn of Forrest Gump. At 7, he was one of thousands of boys to try out for the role of Anakin Skywalker in "Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace."

Three years later, he read for the part of Cole Sear in "The Sixth Sense," and his shaky-voiced reading of the line "I see dead people" earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Now a sophomore in an L.A. high school, Osment is just starting to look at colleges, but his sights are mainly set on performing.

"He's got good instincts, and he's a natural. We'll see what happens as he gets older," says Duvall. "I hope as he grows into manhood that it'll hold. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't."

Yet Osment says he doesn't worry about suffering the worst fate that can befall a child star: becoming so identifiable as a kid that he can't be seen as an adult.

"With this business, you can't predict at all," he says. "You can prepare, but you can't plan. You never know when the next good script, or the next good role, will pop up."