You don’t need a sixth sense to understand this report:
Teen actor Haley Joel Osment, who suffered a broken rib last month when his car struck a mailbox, faces up to six months in jail on charges that he was driving drunk and possessing marijuana, authorities said.
Osment’s blood-alcohol level after the July 20 crash was measured at .16 percent, twice the legal limit, said Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.
The 18-year-old actor was charged Thursday with misdemeanor counts of driving under the influence, marijuana possession and driving under the influence with the special allegation of having a blood-alcohol content of .15 percent or higher. He also faces a vehicle code infraction of being under the age of 21 and driving with a blood-alcohol level of .05 percent or greater.
Osment was scheduled to be arraigned Sept. 19 in Glendale Superior Court.
Osment is truly a wonderful actor. Hopefully he’ll review the histories of what has happened to many child actors — not just child actors who found that the older the get the less the film industry wanted them but child actors who became teens (or young adults) and had lots of work. Sometimes an event like this is a wake-up call.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, writes a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.