50 Fun Facts About The Sixth Sense

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

Michael Cera, then 10, auditioned for Cole and recalls getting the tone all wrong, playing the scene 'upbeat' rather than in tears; Liam Aiken was offered the part and turned it down.

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: born on August 6, 1970, Shyamalan saw the film take nearly $27 million that weekend, where his previous release, Wide Awake, had taken roughly $300,000 in its entire run.

After Broadway Brawler collapsed, Bruce Willis owed Disney three discounted films: The Sixth Sense, The Kid and which 1998 film?

Armageddon came first of the three: Willis had fired much of Broadway Brawler's crew about 20 days into the shoot, and rather than sue, Disney had him work off the loss at a reduced fee.

Which awards voted The Sixth Sense Favorite Motion Picture in 2000?

People's Choice Awards voters also named it Favorite Dramatic Motion Picture in January 2000, a public verdict the Academy did not share: all six of its Oscar nominations lost that March.

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

Toni Collette earned an Oscar nomination as Lynn Sear, having almost not read the script for fear it would be a 'formulaic Hollywood action drama' built around Bruce Willis.

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, lost 43 pounds to play the gaunt intruder who shoots Malcolm in the opening scene, out to prove he was serious about acting.

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., delivers one of the film's jolts when Kyra's hand shoots out from under her bed to grab Cole; she also appeared in Notting Hill that 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, 11, went on to an Oscar nomination for the same performance and lost again, this time to Michael Caine in The Cider House Rules.

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; Mondshein had got The Sixth Sense after cutting Shyamalan's previous film, Wide Awake, during whose long post-production the new script was written.

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

The Nebula Award for Best Script went to a ghost story rather than to science fiction: the finalists it beat included Brad Bird's The Iron Giant, about a giant robot from outer space.

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 was The Sixth Sense's cinematographer?

Tak Fujimoto had shot The Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia for Demme, the second in the very city where The Sixth Sense is set, and returned for Shyamalan's Signs and The Happening.

Which Sixth Sense producer, sharing its Best Picture nomination, went on to run a major film studio?

Kathleen Kennedy produced it with Frank Marshall and Barry Mendel; in 2012 George Lucas named her co-chair of Lucasfilm and his chosen successor.

Which Shyamalan film, his follow-up to The Sixth Sense, cast Bruce Willis as a stadium security guard?

Unbreakable's David Dunn walks away from a train crash without a scratch, and a comic-book dealer played by Samuel L. Jackson pushes him to accept that he has superhuman powers.

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

Forrest Gump's son, Forrest Jr., came his way after the film's casting director spotted him in a Pizza Hut commercial; he later voiced Sora in the Kingdom Hearts games.

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: 'They used to hang people here', Cole says, and when Mr. Cunningham insists the building was a courthouse full of lawmakers, the boy answers that they were the ones who hanged everybody.

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

Free association writing is something Cole says he has already tried, producing what he calls 'upset words'; Malcolm asks whether any of them came before his father left.

What makes Malcolm Crowe finally 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 Kyra Collins's videotape reveal to her father 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.

Cole ends The Sixth Sense as the lead in his school play, cast as which legendary hero?

King Arthur: Cole draws the sword from the stone while his tormentor Tommy Tammisimo is reduced to playing the village idiot, and Malcolm watches from the audience.

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

A cupboard: once shut inside, Cole screams as though someone were in there with him, and he faints when he is let out; soon afterwards he tells Malcolm his secret.

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

Olivia Williams plays Anna, who seems to freeze Malcolm out after the shooting; the finale recasts her silences as a widow's grief, since he has been dead all along.

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, made for about $40 million, took more over Labor Day, its fifth weekend, than on its opening, and finished with $293.5 million in the US.

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

Halloween, Rob Zombie's remake, needed its opening weekend to take $30.6 million over the holiday; The Sixth Sense had set its mark of about $29 million in its fifth weekend on release.

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

Hollywood Pictures began operating in 1989 to make films of more adult interest than Disney's usual fare, starting with Arachnophobia; nothing it released ever out-earned The Sixth Sense.

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, which Shyamalan followed wherever possible, is rare because shoots usually group scenes by location; here it let Osment carry real memories of earlier scenes into later ones.

Where does Malcolm Crowe first catch up with Cole, finding him playing with toy soldiers?

A church: Cole treats it as a sanctuary from the dead, and the scenes were filmed at St. Augustine's, a Catholic church in Philadelphia's Old City.

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

A scene being edited was the giveaway: passing a makeshift edit suite on set, she watched Kyra's hand grab Cole from under a bed, having thought she was making 'a beautiful spiritual story'.

In one of his trademark cameos, M. Night Shyamalan plays which small role in The Sixth Sense?

Dr. Hill, a physician, examines Cole after the party and hints that he suspects Lynn of hurting him; Shyamalan went on to play 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, argued the film took his novel's ghost twist and simply moved it onto another character, but conceded 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 released the Rosie O'Donnell film in March 1998, three years after it was shot, following creative differences between Shyamalan and Harvey Weinstein; it took roughly $300,000.

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

India: Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan was born in Mahé to two doctors, but rather than follow the family into medicine as his father hoped, he studied film at NYU, graduating in 1992.

What condition came attached to Shyamalan's Sixth Sense spec script when Disney bought it?

'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.

Which film was the only 1999 release to out-earn The Sixth Sense worldwide?

The Phantom Menace took about $924 million to The Sixth Sense's $673 million; M. Night Shyamalan's two earlier films had earned less than half a million dollars between them.

Malcolm Crowe, who begins treating nine-year-old Cole Sear, works in which profession?

A child psychologist: on the night he is shot, Malcolm is celebrating a mayor's citation for his work with children, and Cole reminds him of Vincent Grey, the patient he failed.

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'.

After buying the script, Disney 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 Oscar-winning actress was considered for the role of Cole's mother in The Sixth Sense?

Marisa Tomei, an Oscar winner for My Cousin Vinny, 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 of these was a real tagline used to market The Sixth Sense?

'Not every gift is a blessing' casts Cole's ability as a burden, and echoes the opening scene, in which Anna tells Malcolm he has a gift for helping children.

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

Breakthrough Male went to the 12-year-old Osment over adult newcomers including Wes Bentley and Jason Biggs; the film was also up for Best Movie, and he and Willis for Best On-Screen Duo.