If you've seen "Secondhand Lions," the Texas-filmed movie that opened recently, you've probably made one inescapable observation. It's not about whether the movie looks good, it's about Haley Joel Osment's voice. It has changed.

This should come as no surprise. Osment, perhaps the best child star of recent years ("The Sixth Sense", "A.I. Artificial Intelligence") is no longer a child star. He's 15, itching for the day next April that he can get his driver's license and amused by the attention his deeper voice is getting. But he's also determined not to become a child star frozen in time.

"As an actor, that's the last thing you want to do is stay doing the same character over and over," he says. "The character, while you're doing it, is great, especially if you get to do a performance that you'll always be happy with. I'm very happy with 'Sixth Sense.' But that's on its own. That can't be part of what you do afterward."

That's the answer of a seasoned actor, one who's used to talking to the media. Which, of course, Osment is. As he bounces with nervous energy, it's easy to forget that this teenager is already an Academy Award nominee and that he's already had a career-defining role. In "The Sixth Sense," he played a haunted child, Cole, with such empathy and eeriness that Cole's fear became part of the movie's chills. He also slyly fit into the movie's clever structure, which led to a knockdown twist that only the sharpest viewers could see coming.

Most actors wait a lifetime for roles like that; child actors sometimes never recover from them. But Osment already has another beautiful performance to his credit, as David, the android who wants to be a real little boy in "A.I." Osment added wonder, poignancy and even subtle terror to a character that could have been cloying. Even when he's drowned by melodramatic mawkishness, as he was in the well-meaning misfire "Pay It Forward," Osment transcends the story.

No typecasting, please

In "Secondhand Lions," Osment is surrounded by some more melodrama, but there are also heavy doses of humor and adventure in writer-director Tim McCanlies' story about a shy teen who spends a summer with a couple of eccentric uncles. Osment's fourth high-profile movie role shares an earnestness with his other best-known work, and as talented as he is, he risks typecasting and even critical backlash, which is something a teen shouldn't have to worry about.

Not that Osment does.

"I think most actors don't pay too much attention to reviews," says Osment, adding that he would like to play a villain someday but that opportunities for that kind of role are limited in his age group. "It's good to know the response that you get. But there's so many reviews, and they're so varied, and you don't know what causes people to respond a certain way. So it's really good not to take them too seriously, good or bad."

Osment has a reputation for maturity, both on and off the set. He has also been fortunate to work with directors who are sensitive to young actors. Those include "Lions'" McCanlies, who also worked with Michael Caine and Robert Duvall, who play Osment's uncles in the movie. These are people who are a little more intimidating and experienced -- and McCanlies counts Osment among them.

"This guy has worked with (Steven) Spielberg, (Robert) Zemeckis, M. Night Shyamalan," McCanlies says, adding that it was interesting to see the bonding that went on among Osment and the older actors, especially Caine. "They were both nominated for an Academy Award the same year," McCanlies says. "So they were always peers, from minute one. I think Bobby (Duvall) wasn't sure about working with a kid at first, but very quickly, when he found out who Haley is and how great he is ... they were really three equals. They were all peers, and they talked to each other like peers."

When McCanlies mentions that he has been trying for 10 years to get "Lions" produced, you begin to understand just how experienced Osment is: Around the time McCanlies first started shopping the script, Osment had appeared in the Pizza Hut commercial that would begin his career. With experience has come a reputation for professionalism and politeness, both on-set and during interviews.

A family affair

The true grounding element for Osment is his family, especially his father, Eugene, who doubles as an acting coach and has a bit part in "Lions." He's determined that his family won't implode, the way families of young stars sometimes do. (Haley's younger sister, Emily, also acts. She appeared in two of the three "Spy Kids" movies).

"It's very hard to get through this business without having support," Osment says of his family. "You really do need that support, whether it's from family or elsewhere, in order to not get carried away from the outlying aspects of the business. It's very hard to stay focused."

That doesn't mean he's missing out on childhood, though. He's big on video games and has lent his voice to at least one of them; he's also a jock, getting into golf, cross-country racing and soccer. He brings his guitar along when he's filming on location, and his musical tastes lean toward the artier side of pop -- Radiohead, Coldplay, R.E.M., Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin.

But he really becomes engaged when the conversation turns to history. He and his father traveled to Poland in 2000 to work on "Edges of the Lord," a Holocaust drama. The movie, which is being held up over legal matters, stirred Osment's interest in history, a subject he thinks some teens are missing out on.

"I read some fact recently," he says, "that even despite the big blitz of information that has been put out there by people trying to raise awareness of these things, I think it was like 30 percent of high school graduates in the United States tested that they knew what the Holocaust was. That's appalling, that something that catastrophic in history is unknown to modern people. It's because there's so much indifference to the past, and that's just a recipe for disaster."

Osment then begins to discuss current genocides in North Korea and Africa, and it's about then that a remark made by Osment's "Pay It Forward" co-star Kevin Spacey -- who called Osment "a 40-year-old midget" -- begins to sound accurate. But Osment credits his parents for teaching him to read early and his teachers for inspiring a love of reading, and he criticizes the underfunding of U.S. public schools. Here, he's beginning to sound like the future Yale student he aspires to be. He's not sure, though, whether he'll pull a Brooke Shields and drop out of acting for a few years to concentrate on college.

"It's hard for me to say whether it will be possible for me to do films while I'm in school," he says. "But if I go to Yale or wherever, I definitely will be involved in the drama department."