Haley Joel Osment got his big break in Ikea.
Haley Joel Osment
The 'Sixth Sense' actor insists his success as a child star was an "accident" because he simply had the good fortune to be in the right place at the right time.
He explained: "It was pretty much an accident. I was at the Burbank Ikea, and it's so weird that they'd do this because I think if you saw this now, you'd be like, 'What?'
" But they had a casting table with two women taking Polaroids of all the kids who would come into the store."
I guess our stranger-danger knowledge was poor in the early '90s, as a society.
"[They were] right by the play place in the little-kid area for them to go when the parents shop.
"They took a Polaroid and nobody thought anything of it until we got called to do a cattle call at one of those kids' commercial things. We went, and from that audition, within a couple of weeks, I was doing a Pizza Hut commercial for Bigfoot pizzas, a promotional pizza they had. Just from that commercial, the casting director for 'Forrest Gump' who got in contact with us and I was reading with [director Robert] Zemeckis and Tom Hanks pretty soon after that. It all kind of snowballed from there."
Despite his years of success as a youngster, the 28-year-old star was happy to put his career on hold when he turned 18 in order to go to college, even though he knew it would be a risky move for his future.
He told Vulture: "There was this five- to six-year period when I was at school [at NYU] and I was not appearing in a lot of things.
"I did an indie film, I did a show on Broadway when I was in college that was not that successful, but going away to study was not a tough decision, because I always knew I wanted to go to college.
"And with my mom being a sixth-grade teacher, I was definitely going to college. Skipping it was out of the question.
"I always knew you can go to college at any point in your life, but there's a unique opportunity when you're 18, to go to a new city and have the opportunity, for me, to make sure this is what I wanted to do and focus in purely on the craft and not the business side of it.
"It ended up working out great. It does take some time to come back to L.A. and be in the conversation for those roles, but it was a price I was willing to pay."