Osment was born to the family of Theresa, a teacher, and Michael Eugene Osment, a theater actor. His sister is the actress Emily Osment, famed for the movies Hannah Montana and Spy Kids. In the earlier time he was a student of Flintridge, the preparatory school in La Canada, California and at present attends the Tisch School of the Arts, of the University of New York. Being an acting prodigy Osment initiated his acting carer at the age of four, when he tried out for a Pizza Hut commercial in a shopping mall. The commercial launched his career, and in the later months of the same year he landed his first television role. As a young child his first film role was as the son of the Forrest Gump, also named Forrest Gump, in the 1994 film of the same name as well as making a small appearance in the Mixed Nuts. During this very time he acted in several roles in an assortment of TV series, that includes The Thunder Alley, The Jeff Foxworthy Show and most notably the final season of Murphy Brown, where he replaced Dylan Christopher as Avery, the son of Murphy. He also made numerous guest appearances in various TV series including the Larry Sander's Show, Walker, Texas Ranger (as a child dying from AIDS), Touched by An Angel, Chicago Hope, The Pretender and also a a child dying from leukemia in the emotional episode "Angels and Blimps" of the late-1990s show Ally McBeal. Osment also starred in the Bogus along with several leading actors like Whoopi Goldberg and Gerard Depardieu, and also appeared in the 1998 made-for-TV-movie The Lake with Yasmine Bleeth, as well as I'll Remember April with Trevor Morgan, his co-star for the future film The Sixth Sense. But it is to be noted that the first achievement of the stardom for Osment was with Bruce Wills, in the year 1999 when he appeared in the same blockbuster, The Sixth Sense. It was at the same time when he was nominated for the Academy Award for the Best Supporting Actor, but however lost to Michael Caine, with whom he acted in the later years, for the film the Secondhand Lions .
One of Osment's lines in The Sixth Sense , "I see dead people" is often found to be repeated or parodied on television programs and in other media. Again, Osment also made three minor guest appearances on Family Guy in 2000.

Nevertheless, following the success of The Sixth Sense with the well-intended but fatally flawed movie Pay It Forward Osment somehow managed to escape. The chief reason behind this is the critics recognized the young actor's excellent presentation in what was otherwise considered to be a flop with critics and audiences alike. Now as far as the next movie was concerned imagination became the most dominant aspect of Osment. What was it? It was the internationally acclaimed film director Steven Spielberg's 's long anticipated, and also much-hyped A.I. it was nothing but an ornately made futuristic tale of an android that has the aspiration to experience human emotion. A.I. was the first and only collaboration of two of the most influential filmmakers of the 20th century that includes the late Stanley Kubrick, who was entirely responsible for the story, based on the short story - Supertoys Last All Summer Long of Brian Aldiss and Steven Spielberg.
In addition to appearing onscreen, Osment lent his voice to a number of animated films in 2000 and 2001, including the Disney sequels The Hunchback of Notre Dame II and The Jungle Book II. It has been found time and large that the onscreen abilities of Osment has been entirely responsible for making his character's transformation from withdrawn child to responsible young man believable as found in several acclaimed movies of him.