He's not dead, people

Child star Haley Joel Osment pretty much vanished after his Oscar-nominated role as the young ghost whisperer in 1999’s “The Sixth Sense.”

But now he’s back in a big, gay way — as the pierced, Daisy Dukes-wearing boyfriend of a car salesman in the quirky comedy “Sassy Pants,” screening at the NewFest LGBT film festival kicking off tonight at Lincoln Center.

Osment still has a youthful twinkle in his eyes, but his pinch-his-cheeks-cute face is rounder, and his body beefier, than in his youth. Does he think fans are ready for an adult Osment parading around shirtless, flashing (fake) tattoos and (real) chest hair?

Peter Yang/August

Haley Joel Osment has had a quiet post-“Sixth Sense”career.

 

“Oh, sure — yeah!” the 24-year-old says.
“A role like this is such a departure from what I’ve done in the past,” he continues in a baritone that itself is a departure from the soft squeak of the boy he played, in the “Sixth Sense,” at 10. “Every actor sort of leaps at the chance to do something like that.”
Osment didn’t disappear from Hollywood immediately after “The Sixth Sense.” He was in “Pay It Forward” with Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt in 2000, and played a poignant part in Steven Spielberg’s “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” in 2001.

But over the next decade, he flew under the radar, dabbling in voice-over work, and had a very brief
Broadway turn in the 2008 flop revival of “American Buffalo.” Last year he graduated from New York University, where he majored in experimental theater.

He avoided the career-hindering public implosions that often befall child stars, with one glaring exception: a July 2006 arrest for driving under the influence and drug possession after he overturned his car in Los Angeles. He was fined, sentenced to 60 hours of rehab and ordered to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings for six months. He calls it a “really, really serious lapse of judgment” and a lesson learned.

He took on “Sassy Pants” because the script made him laugh out loud, “and any script that can make you do that is rare,” he says. “I figured that was a good sign.”

Nor did he have qualms about diving into the uber-gay role. “It really didn’t even cross my mind, the perception of playing a role like this,” says Osment, who’s straight and single. “The less you think about perception, the more you think about the character — that’s better for the performer.”

These days he splits his time between LA and New York, where he says blending in is easier. Even so, he’s occasionally stopped by people who channel his whispery phrase of 13 years ago: “I see dead people.”

“That’s become easier as I’ve gotten older because I don’t look quite the same as I did when that film came out,” he says, laughing. “But it’s kinda cool the film has had that long of a life span.”
“Sassy Pants” screens Tuesday at 3:30 p.m. at NewFest LGBT film festival at the Walter Reade 


Theater, 165 W. 65th St.; newfest.org.


ehegedus@nypost.com