Rise to Fame
A Pizza Hut commercial at age four launched him into child acting, but The Sixth Sense made him a phenomenon. At 11, he delivered "I see dead people" with enough restraint to make M. Night Shyamalan's twist actually land. He earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, among the youngest nominees in that category's history, and Roger Ebert called him one of the best actors working. A.I. Artificial Intelligence and Pay It Forward followed quickly. The question wasn't whether he was talented. It was whether the industry would let that talent survive into adulthood.
In the Spotlight
After A.I., he did something almost no child star attempts: enrolled at NYU Tisch in 2006, graduated in 2011, and came back as a character actor rather than a former child star chasing his moment. That pivot mostly worked. He's appeared in Silicon Valley, The Boys, Blink Twice, and Poker Face, staying legitimately employed without leaning on nostalgia. Then 2025 got complicated. A Mammoth Lakes ski lodge arrest for cocaine possession and public intoxication ended with him calling a cop a "Nazi" on bodycam footage. He apologized publicly. Misdemeanor charges, but it's the kind of thing that complicates a clean story.
Side Notes
He lent his voice to Sora in Kingdom Hearts starting in 2002, a franchise that's made him a fixture for an entire generation of gamers who never connected that voice to The Sixth Sense kid. His father Eugene is a working actor; his sister Emily found fame on Hannah Montana. He spent 15 years based in New York after his breakthrough, partly to escape what he called LA's "predatory, aggressive" celebrity culture. When he came back to Hollywood, he came back as a craftsman, not a personality.