Osment doesn't intend to pull a Dickie Roberts anytime soon

He's played a dead-people-seeing psychic, an unblinking mama's-boy robot, and a child martyr. But now Oscar-nominated actor Haley Joel Osment is taking on the most challenging role of all: a teenager. With his blond locks grown out into a surfer-boy shag, the 15-year-old already looks older (and has a deeper speaking voice) than he did last year when he filmed his new coming-of-age movie, ''Secondhand Lions.'' The precociously polite and sincere Osment tells EW.com about avoiding the fate of Dickie Roberts, working with Robert Duvall and Michael Caine, and not wanting to be a teen idol.

After you did ''A.I.,'' did you ever find it difficult to start blinking again?

[laughs] God, I bet there were times when I didn't blink. It became such an unconscious thing on the set that I really didn't have to pay attention to it to not blink. But I bet there were some times where I gave people some pretty weird stares, unconsciously.

You live a normal teenager's life, going to a regular high school -- but doesn't some part of you want to be out partying and dating Hilary Duff or something?

Well, that's the age right now, so you do get some of that even without being in the business. But I don't feel like I'm missing too much. I'm not getting out of hand.

You're not embracing the teen-star thing, either.

There haven't been a lot of scripts where there have been many characters my age. I'm sure it'd be really fun to do something with an ensemble of people my age. But everyone has their own way of doing things. On the whole star thing -- you never want to be just a star. It's about the acting. All the publicity that comes out of a film is because of a film. So what you focus on is who you want to be as an actor.

How do you plan to avoid the ''Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star'' scenario?

You hear the negative stories, so the good that comes out of it is you know how to avoid the bad things that can come out of this profession. You want a strong home base and a good family and good friends and stuff.

How often do people ask you to say, ''I see dead people''?

It happened A LOT after the film came out, but not too much now, maybe because I'm 15 and it would just sound really weird. [laughs]

In ''Secondhand Lions,'' Robert Duvall is curmudgeonly and Michael Caine is kind to your character -- how much was that reflected in real life?

Any crotchetiness that was portrayed in the movie was definitely acting. They were similar to all the great parts of their characters, but their personalities were really kind.

Did they give you any advice?

Not particularly. They were wise enough to know that the best advice is demonstrated, and not told.

Did you have any concerns about getting upstaged by the various lions, dogs, and zebras in the movie?

The animals were a great part of the set. They added a lot of spontaneous humor by being unpredictable, in a good way. You could almost say that the dogs were ad-libbing.

What do you remember about the scene where you wake up next to the them?

The disheveled, shaken-up quality that Walter has when he wakes up came out of my real experience: We were trying to shoot it with perfect light, and the sun was going down, so we were scrambling around and I had to keep diving into the dirt.

People think of you as a really serious actor, but are you adverse to doing, say, a MTV-style teen comedy?

It's just that the best scripts that have come up in the last couple years have been serious. That was one of the reasons ''Secondhand Lions'' was so great, because it has the light humor I haven't done in a couple of years. It's not like I feel like I shouldn't do any type of film. It's all about how good the story is.