He shocked you as the boy who could see dead people in "The Sixth Sense."

He startled you as a robot child in "A.I. Artificial Intelligence."

Now, in "Secondhand Lions," Haley Joel Osment has his most alarming role of all.

He's a teenager!

Yes, our little Haley, who has been acting since age 4, was 14 when he shot the new film and is now 15. After seeing his earlier work, it can be a little jarring at first to watch this long-boned, 5-foot-5 young man striding through the movie, which opened Friday.

"Playing Walter was very different from playing a lot of the younger roles I've done," says Osment, whose voice on the phone sounds deeper than expected. "He knows he's growing up, but he just doesn't know how to deal with it."

"Secondhand Lions" is a coming-of-age story set mostly on an isolated Texas farm. Osment's character is a fatherless child whose feckless mother dumps him on the doorstep of his gruff, elderly great-uncles for the summer.

Walter's family situation couldn't be further from that of the young actor, whose father, actor Eugene Osment, and mother, schoolteacher Theresa Osment, are totally supportive. A younger sister, Emily, plus two dogs, a guinea pig, a turtle and several lizards complete their Los Angeles household.

Osment found his way into the role of Walter by focusing on the most important thing that he has in common with the character.

"The only thing he has going for him is that he has a pretty vivid imagination, which is what he relies on to get by," says Osment. "That's really where it all started, feeling what it would be like to be Walter."

Osment says that his own imaginative nature was first noticed by his father: Eugene Osment spotted the boy's potential as an actor when the 3-year-old Haley was pretending to be a superhero in the family's back yard.

Not much later, young Osment was in a furniture store where someone was taking pictures of children who might be used in a Pizza Hut ad.

He posed for the picture, snagged the job and hasn't stopped working since.

In fact, he's already worked with some of the finest actors in the business.

Osment made his big-screen debut as Tom Hanks' son in "Forrest Gump." Since then, his co-stars have included Bruce Willis in "The Sixth Sense," Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt in "Pay It Forward" and Jude Law in "A.I."

For "Secondhand Lions," Osment worked with Robert Duvall and Michael Caine, who play Walter's great-uncles.

Osment first met Caine at the Oscars, when both were nominated as best supporting actor. Caine won for "The Cider House Rules" but praised Osment's work in "The Sixth Sense" in his acceptance speech.

"It was a huge honor," says Osment. "Maybe even better than winning the award itself."

As things turned out, that evening led to Caine and Osment being cast together in "Secondhand Lions."

"That was an unknown audition for us," says Caine, who describes his relationship with the boy as being "like father and son." Writer-director Tim McCanlies saw them together at the Oscars, took note of their rapport and, he says in the film's press notes, "had this weird premonition."

Osment says he learned a lot from working with both Caine and Duvall, especially about preparation.

"They prepare their characters very well before beginning to work," he says. "And then, on the set, they can just turn it on. That efficiency, that ability to be able to create reality so quickly, is something that I really watched a lot."

In the new film, Osment's co-stars also include a lion, a giraffe, several dogs and a pig -- or, rather, four pigs.

"Pigs are really smart, and they don't want to do what you tell them," he says. "We had to have four pigs to play one part, and a minimal part at that."

If one pig wouldn't do what was needed, they'd try another. At one point, a very large pig unexpectedly jumped up on Osment.

"It was so weird being jumped up on by a big, pink blob," he recalls.

And although Haley Joel Osment is a bona fide movie star, he also is a teenager. At the moment, he's focused on getting his drivers license when he turns 16 in April.

"Right now, the big thing is driving," he says. "I'm so close!"

And don't assume his Oscar nomination and blockbuster films count for all that much at school. In fact, he's had to content himself with only minor roles in his school's stage productions.

"There's definitely the factor of seniority at school," he explains with a laugh. "I've got to build up that experience."

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page B2.