The Sixth Sense is a classic of the 1990s. Directed by master of suspense and thriller M. Night Shyamalan, the Bruce Willis- and Haley Joel Osment-led film continues to captivate audiences. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Osment revealed that he kept in touch with his co-star in the years following the movie’s release, with the latter leaving him touching voicemails.
The Sixth Sense (1999)
Starring Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment as Malcolm Crowe and Cole Sear, respectively, The Sixth Sense was a psychological thriller that captivated and disturbed audiences. Osment’s character claims to be able to see and interact with the dead, and it’s Crowe’s job to determine if he’s telling the truth or suffering from a mental health issue.
In typical M. Night Shyamalan style, the film is intense and leaves audiences on the edge of their seats until the end. It earned an impressive $672.8 million at the box office and wound up receiving six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor – Osment’s first Oscar nod.
Bruce Willis kept in touch with Haley Joel Osment
Speaking with Entertainment Weekly to mark the 25th anniversary of The Sixth Sense hitting theaters, Haley Joe Osment shared a touching thing Bruce Willis did in the years following the movie’s release.
“I heard from [Bruce] a lot after it came out in those subsequent years,” Osment said in the interview. “He’d leave voicemails at the house from time to time, just checking in. He would just call out of the blue, so sometimes it was in the lead up before travel. We went to Japan together twice, if I remember correctly, to open Sixth Sense in different cities. So he would call ahead of that.
“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,'” he continued. “I need to find those old answering tapes. I know we preserved those. I know his daughters a little bit, but I have not spoken to him since the news of his health in recent years.”
Haley Joel Osment was a huge fan of Bruce Willis
Haley Joel Osment went on to explain that, prior to filming The Sixth Sense, he was a major fan of Bruce Willis, having seen the actor in Die Hard (1988) and other releases. Knowing how cool John McClane was, Osment expected Willis to be similar to the character, but found him “more subdued and academic.”
That being said, it didn’t take away the young actor’s admiration for the action star.
“I had worked with Tom Hanks before on Forrest Gump and other big name actors, but at that point, I was old enough to have seen a lot of Bruce’s movies, which added a lot of excitement to it,” Osment told Entertainment Weekly. “And that’s something that lasts your entire career, where you get to work with people who you’ve enjoyed watching in other things. It made a huge impression me because that was the first gigantic celebrity that I’d worked with at any age where I was aware of his stardom.”
He added, “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, because things usually revolve around the No. 1 on the call sheet. It was a script that we all cared about so much and put so much effort into, and Bruce led the way on that.”
Bruce Willis’ frontotemporal dementia diagnosis
In 2022, Bruce Willis announced his retirement from acting, as he’d been diagnosed with aphasia, a neurological disorder that affects one’s ability to formulate and understand language. While the primary cause is stroke, there are other ways in which it’s induced, such as epilepsy, the presence of brain tumors and neurodegenerative disorders, like dementia.
In the lead-up the the announcement, Willis had been experiencing struggles on set. Not only did he need to have his lines fed to him through an earpiece, he also had to have his on-screen dialogue reduced, to ensure his condition didn’t impact production.
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A year later, Willis’ family announced he’d been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, which presents similarly to aphasia. While devastated, they said that they hoped the news would raise awareness for the condition, telling the media:
“As Bruce’s condition advances, we hope that any media attention can be focused on shining a light on this disease that needs far more awareness and research.”