Haley Joel Osment, 13-year-old star

Haley Joel Osment, 13-year-old star of “The Sixth Sense” and “A.I., Artificial Intelligence” spoke with reporters in New York recently about how he feels about being passed over for Chris Columbus’s film version of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” UPI News recorded the following:

Talking more like a confident, well-spoken businessman than a newly minted teenager, Osment insisted that he was never interested in the Potter project even though his name may have been batted around in connection with the film in boardrooms and the press. Media reports stated that Columbus chose Daniel Radcliffe over Osment because the young actor is British, just like the “real” Potter.

“Harry Potter, we were never really interested in,” Osment declared. “It never crossed a desk with us. Nothing really happened with it. Myself, I felt that it should have stayed a book. I never would have wanted to do the film. It’s a great book and 70 percent of the book is your own imagination and putting in where the author has purposely left the gaps so kids can sort of put in their input and sort of custom read the book and I think that’s one of the most brilliant parts of the novels and when the movie comes out it’s going to be a stereotype for people when they read the book,” he said.