Haley Joel Osment said that he heard from Bruce Willis “a lot” in the years after they appeared in 1999′s “The Sixth Sense,” with Willis calling his co-star’s house just to check in.
The actor reflected on the voicemails Willis left from “time to time” as he spoke to Entertainment Weekly for a story published Friday, in honor of the M. Night Shyamalan thriller’s 25th anniversary.
“He would just call out of the blue, so sometimes it was in the lead up before travel,” said Osment, who added that they went to Japan together twice to open “The Sixth Sense” in different cities.
“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.’”
Osment, whose performance as Cole Sear earned him Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations, said that working with Willis was “fantastic.”
Osment was 10 years old when “The Sixth Sense” was shot but said he was “old enough to have seen a lot” of Willis’ films, so there was excitement around working together.
“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 said.
“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.”
Osment told EW that he hadn’t spoken to Willis since news broke of his recent health battles.
Willis’ family announced that he was retiring from acting back in 2022 after he was diagnosed with aphasia. His family later said that Willis’ condition had progressed to frontotemporal dementia, which can result in trouble communicating, unusual behaviors and emotional problems, according to the National Institute on Aging.
Osment, at a premiere event for the new film “Blink Twice” last month, shared well wishes for Willis and showed love to the actor’s “wonderful” family for being “courageous” in giving updates about him.
“I just feel grateful to have known him and got to work with him because he’s a wonderful, larger-than-life person,” Osment told Access Hollywood’s Zuri Hall.
Read more on Osment at Entertainment Weekly.
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