Haley Joel Osment : Actor Okay With ‘Being Unrecognizable’ (Photo)

Despite the city looking great on camera, this below-the-belt comedy won’t be remembered among Tampa’s finest movie moments. Even the tourism board can’t squeeze much out of this one, family unfriendly as it is. Sex Ed isn’t unwatchable, but does flirt with being unlikable.

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This year Osment had roles in the miniseries spoof The Spoils of Babylon, opposite Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig, the web series Alpha House, and a recent turn in Kevin Smith’s walrus horror show Tusk. Coming in 2015 is another collaboration with Smith and a movie version of HBO’s celebrity satire Entourage.

And, of course, there is Sex Ed, a g-string budgeted comedy filmed last year around Tampa Bay, opening Friday chiefly on home video on demand. It’s a small, yet key piece of Osment’s comeback puzzle, a project he joined before graduating, planning ahead.

“In this business you never count too much on being sure that things are going to happen, or that good roles will even be available,” Osment said by phone from L.A. “I certainly wanted to get back to making films but I wasn’t counting on anything.”

Few former child actors can, even with credentials like Osment’s. For every Neil Patrick Harris growing up successful in Hollywood there’s a Quinn Cummings forgotten right away. Osment understands fans for whom he hasn’t grown up, who expect to see the preternatural kid from The Sixth Sense, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence and Pay It Forward. And how tough it will be to catch them up to speed.

“It’s a long process,” he said. “There are so many films I did when I was younger, and I guess I was lucky because they stand up pretty well now. But they put an image of you in people’s minds that takes a while to change. . . . I’m proud of those films. It’s cool that people remember them.

“You just have to take (roles) over time that are different from anything you’ve done before. Since most of the things I’ve done were younger, it isn’t difficult to find those roles.”

It’s a strategy that Osment wants to take to another level beyond acting.

“Since I was a kid, I looked up to people like Ron Howard and Jodie Foster because they also got behind the camera at some point,” he said. “That is what I want at some point. I’ve met Daniel Radcliffe a couple of times and think he’s a great example, and he had an even more specific image from his childhood to deal with. He made a lot of good decisions, and is working for all the right reasons.”

Agencies/Canadajournal