50 Fun Facts About The Sixth Sense

Which future Superbad star auditioned to play Cole Sear in The Sixth Sense?

Michael Cera auditioned for Cole, and Liam Aiken was offered the role but turned it down; Shyamalan worried Osment's video audition was too sweet and cherubic for a part he saw as dark and brooding.

Which December 1999 family film, released four months after The Sixth Sense, did M. Night Shyamalan co-write?

Stuart Little, co-written with Greg Brooker from E. B. White's novel, opened on December 17, 1999 with Michael J. Fox voicing the mouse: a twist-free children's film from the year's master of twists.

The Sixth Sense opened on August 6, 1999, which was also what milestone for its writer-director?

His 29th birthday: Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan was born on August 6, 1970, and raised in Penn Valley, Pennsylvania, so the biggest release of his career landed on his own birthday.

Bruce Willis took The Sixth Sense to repay Disney for the collapse of which unfinished 1997 film?

Broadway Brawler collapsed in 1997 and, rather than sue, Disney signed Willis to three discounted films: Armageddon, The Sixth Sense and The Kid, which he completed in 2000.

How many Oscars did The Sixth Sense win from its six Academy Award nominations?

Zero, and its four BAFTA nominations also went unrewarded; its trophies came from the Satellite Awards, for writing and editing, and the Saturn Awards, where Osment won.

Which Muriel's Wedding breakout plays Cole's mother Lynn Sear in The Sixth Sense?

Toni Collette earned her first Oscar nomination as Lynn Sear, having feared from the script that the film would turn out to be a formulaic Hollywood action drama.

Which New Kids on the Block singer plays ex-patient Vincent Grey in The Sixth Sense's opening?

Donnie Wahlberg, a founding member of the boy band, plays the intruder who shoots Malcolm in the opening sequence; the part drew notice long before his run as Danny Reagan on Blue Bloods.

Which future star of The O.C. plays Kyra Collins, the ghost girl who leads Cole to a videotape?

Mischa Barton, later Marissa Cooper on The O.C., was attending middle school in New York while The Sixth Sense was in cinemas, and appeared in Notting Hill the same year.

According to Cole, what happens to a room when the dead who visit him get angry?

'It gets cold' when they get mad, Cole says, after describing the prickly feeling on the back of your neck and the hairs on your arms standing up as the sign that they are near.

Which two-word answer does Cole relay from his grandmother when Lynn asks if she makes her proud?

'Every day' is the reply, delivered with the proof that the grandmother secretly watched Lynn's childhood dance recital from the back, which finally makes Lynn believe her son.

Which film beat The Sixth Sense to Best Picture at the Academy Awards ceremony held in March 2000?

American Beauty swept Picture, Director, Actor and Original Screenplay, leaving The Sixth Sense empty-handed despite being the highest earner among the five Best Picture nominees.

Haley Joel Osment's Golden Globe nomination lost to which actor's self-help guru in Magnolia?

Tom Cruise won for playing Frank T.J. Mackey in Magnolia; Osment's season still brought Oscar and SAG nominations, the Critics' Choice prize for Best Child Performer and a Saturn Award for Best Performance by a Younger Actor.

Lynn Sear's actress lost the Best Supporting Actress Oscar to which star of Girl, Interrupted?

Angelina Jolie won for playing Lisa Rowe in Girl, Interrupted; The Sixth Sense's nominations that night ran from Best Picture to film editing, and it went home with nothing.

Andrew Mondshein's Best Film Editing nomination for The Sixth Sense lost to which other 1999 film?

The Matrix took Best Film Editing for Zach Staenberg, the same night it won Best Visual Effects; Mondshein's consolation was the Satellite Award for his cut.

Which science-fiction writers' prize voted The Sixth Sense the Best Script of 1999?

The Nebula Award for Best Script was voted by members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, with Brad Bird's The Iron Giant among the scripts it beat.

Which composer wrote The Sixth Sense's score, the first of eight straight Shyamalan films he scored?

James Newton Howard got the job after the producers replaced another composer; the score, released by Varèse Sarabande, earned him an ASCAP award, and he scored every Shyamalan film through After Earth in 2013.

Which Jonathan Demme regular, who also shot Badlands, was The Sixth Sense's cinematographer?

Tak Fujimoto shot 11 films with Demme, including The Silence of the Lambs, and returned for Shyamalan's Signs and The Happening.

Which Sixth Sense producer, sharing its Best Picture nomination, went on to run Lucasfilm from 2012?

Kathleen Kennedy produced it with Frank Marshall and Barry Mendel through the Kennedy/Marshall Company, which later made Signs and Seabiscuit; she ran Lucasfilm from 2012 to 2026.

Which 2000 Shyamalan film has Bruce Willis as a security guard who survives a train crash unhurt?

Unbreakable cast Willis as David Dunn opposite Samuel L. Jackson's Elijah Price; Shyamalan built it to parallel a comic book's traditional three-part story structure.

Haley Joel Osment's first film role, five years before The Sixth Sense, was as whose son?

Forrest Gump's son, Forrest Jr., won Osment a Young Artist Award; he later voiced Sora in the Kingdom Hearts games and won a second Saturn Award for A.I. Artificial Intelligence.

On Malcolm Crowe's old tape of a session with Vincent Grey, a pleading voice speaks which language?

Spanish: the voice says 'Yo no quiero morir', meaning 'I don't want to die', in a room where Vincent was supposedly alone, which convinces Malcolm that Vincent shared Cole's ability.

What childhood nickname does Cole blurt out at his teacher Mr. Cunningham in front of the class?

'Stuttering Stanley' is a taunt Cole could only have learned from the dead, and it breaks the teacher's composure; the part is played by Bruce Norris, who later won a Pulitzer Prize for his play Clybourne Park.

Cole tells Mr. Cunningham their school, once a courthouse, was used for what grim purpose?

Hangings: Cole insists 'they used to hang people here', to the teacher's horror, after a lesson about Philadelphia being one of America's oldest cities.

Malcolm Crowe describes which exercise to Cole as putting pencil to paper and starting to write?

Free association writing, Malcolm explains, means taking a pencil to paper and writing whatever comes, one of the textbook tools he tries before accepting that Cole's problem is not in his head.

In The Sixth Sense's finale, what makes Malcolm Crowe realise he never survived Vincent's attack?

The ring dropping from Anna's hand shows Malcolm his own finger is bare; remembering Cole's words that the dead see only what they want to see, he finds the gunshot wound and understands.

How does Cole suggest Malcolm Crowe finally get through to his distant wife Anna?

Speak to her as she sleeps, Cole suggests, so Anna can hear Malcolm's thoughts and feelings; Malcolm finds her dozing by their wedding video, murmuring 'Why did you leave me?'.

What does the videotape Kyra Collins leaves for her father reveal at her funeral reception?

Her mother had been poisoning her food, which explains the 'long illness' and saves Kyra's younger sister; Cole had worked out who the ghost was after finding her being sick one night.

When Cole lands the lead in his school play, who does The Sixth Sense show coaching him?

A ghostly director coaches him, with Malcolm watching from the audience, a sign that Cole has stopped fearing the dead and started listening to them as Malcolm advised.

At a birthday party, where do bullies lock Cole after noticing that it frightens him?

A cupboard: when he is let out he faints with marks on his body that Lynn blames on the boys, and soon afterwards he tells Malcolm his secret.

Which British actress, fresh from Rushmore, plays Malcolm Crowe's wife Anna in The Sixth Sense?

Olivia Williams plays Anna, the wife who seems to freeze Malcolm out; she trained for two years at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and spent three with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

The Sixth Sense's $26.6 million debut beat which 1993 Harrison Ford film's August opening record?

The Fugitive had held the August record since 1993; The Sixth Sense then kept it for two years, until Rush Hour 2 took it in 2001.

Which 1997 film, before The Sixth Sense, had grossed over $20 million on five straight weekends?

Titanic did it first; The Sixth Sense spent five weeks at number one in the US and finished with $293.5 million domestically, then the tenth-highest total ever in that market.

Which 2007 horror remake finally broke the Labor Day weekend record The Sixth Sense set in 1999?

Halloween took the Labor Day weekend crown with The Sixth Sense's $29.2 million finally beaten; the film's $6.3 million Labor Day Monday stood even longer, until It passed it in 2017.

Which Disney label, shut down in 2007, released The Sixth Sense as its most successful film ever?

Hollywood Pictures was created in 1989 by Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg for adult-skewing films; after years of hiatus it was shut down on April 27, 2007, surviving only as a name.

Malcolm Crowe only wears clothes from the night he was shot, including which distinctive garment?

A blue rowing sweatshirt, his overcoat and the layers of his suit are the only clothes he wears, one of the rules the filmmakers set so the twist would survive a second viewing.

According to Shyamalan, how was The Sixth Sense's shooting schedule unusually arranged?

Chronological order is rare because productions usually group scenes by location; most of the location work happened on Philadelphia streets and in its buildings.

Which church at 4th and New Streets in Philadelphia's Old City was a Sixth Sense filming location?

St. Augustine's Church was one of the main locations; other work took place on Saint Albans Street in Southwest Center City, since Shyamalan kept the shoot close to where he grew up.

Lynn's actress said in 2025 she only realised The Sixth Sense was a horror film on seeing what?

A scene being edited, one with Kyra and Cole, was the moment; reading the script she had feared it would be a formulaic Hollywood action drama.

Continuing his habit of cameos, M. Night Shyamalan plays which small role in The Sixth Sense?

Dr. Hill, a physician, is Shyamalan's cameo; he turns up in nearly all his films, playing a stadium drug dealer in his 2000 follow-up and a vet in Signs.

Which novelist claimed The Sixth Sense took elements from his book Lost Boys but saw no point suing?

Orson Scott Card, the author of Ender's Game, made the claim about his novel Lost Boys, while conceding that enough had been changed that there was no point in suing.

Shyamalan's earlier film Wide Awake sat shelved at which studio for years before its 1998 release?

Miramax's Harvey Weinstein wanted to recut the Rosie O'Donnell film, shot in 1995; it surfaced only after Shyamalan's headline-making sale of The Sixth Sense script.

Raised in Penn Valley, Pennsylvania, The Sixth Sense's writer-director was born in which country?

India: Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan was born in Mahé, in the territory of Puducherry, to two doctors, and graduated from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in 1992.

Beyond its $3 million price, what condition came attached to Shyamalan's Sixth Sense spec script?

'He would direct it himself' was the stipulation Disney's David Vogel accepted without corporate approval, a decision that cost Vogel his job and gave Shyamalan his breakthrough.

The Sixth Sense ranks 60th on which American Film Institute list, besides 89th on its 100 Movies?

100 Thrills placed it 60th; the Writers Guild of America separately ranked the screenplay 50th on its 2006 list of the 101 Greatest Screenplays.

How old is Cole Sear when Malcolm Crowe begins treating him in The Sixth Sense?

Nine years old, and a reminder to Malcolm of Vincent Grey, the patient he failed; the story jumps to 'the next fall' after the shooting in the opening scene.

Where does Cole first encounter Kyra Collins, who is being sick, in The Sixth Sense?

In his tent, which is one of the few objects shown in red, the colour Shyamalan reserved for 'anything in the real world that has been tainted by the other world'.

Disney paid $3 million for the script, then sold The Sixth Sense's production rights to which firm?

Spyglass Entertainment took the production rights as only its second film, while Disney kept distribution; David Vogel, who bought the script without corporate approval, was dismissed.

Which My Cousin Vinny Oscar winner was considered for the role of Cole's mother in The Sixth Sense?

Marisa Tomei was considered for Lynn Sear before the part went to an Australian; the role brought its eventual player an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

Which poster tagline for The Sixth Sense hints at Cole's ability rather than at the ending?

'Not every gift is a blessing' framed Cole's sight as a burden; the marketing never tipped the twist, helping the film stay at number one for five weeks in the US.

At the 2000 MTV Movie Awards, Haley Joel Osment won which category for The Sixth Sense?

Breakthrough Male went to Osment over Wes Bentley and Jason Biggs; the film was also up for Best Movie, Willis for Best Male Performance, and the pair for Best On-Screen Duo.