Sometimes it seems like this site is about Miley Cyrus, the girl just can’t stay out of the news. So it’s probably time to pay some attention to her co-star on Hannah Montana; Emily Osment. Why? Because she might have more potential than Miley in the long run.
It’s not really that big a surprise that Emily went into the acting business, her brother is of course Haley Joel Osment who has had quite a number of big movies at his young age. Her dad is also somewhat of an actor, not really a successful career but he gets small roles once in a while; he’s probably too busy managing Haley’s and Emily’s career.
Emily’s first big role was actually quite noticable; she played the character of Gertie Giggles In Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams, she revisited that role in Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over but that was just a very short appearance at the end. She got cast for that part without Robert Rodriguez knowing that she’s Haley Joel’s sister so it’s not really a case of her name helping her. She simply auditioned, Rodriguez liked her so she got the job. That’s a weird thing though, she’s only asked about her brother being an actor in passing. I’ve rarely actually heard people saying that she has to thank her brother for her career. That’s probably due to the fact that they’re not that far apart in age and that she’s having a completely different career than her brother. They’re active in completely different sections of Hollywood if you look at it.
After the two Spy Kids movies it stayed quiet for a while, a couple of guest spots on TV shows but nothnig major. So not that much going on in her career; until the moment she got cast as Lilly Truscot on Hannah Montana. Everyone knows the story behind that show so no real need to get into detail on that. Fact is that Emily plays the second largest character on the show behind Miley; it’s the same with media attention, Miley gets most of the attention and Emily far less.
So Emily is a bit in Miley’s shadow (their names are even anagrams of each other and they’re the best of friends apparently) but has had more acting experience. Miley is just known for Hannah Montana, Emily isn’t so ten years from now there is a good chance Miley will still be identified with Hannah while most people will have forgotten about Lilly by then. So she’ll just have less of a “stigma”, so she’ll have an easier job developing the rest of her career. She would have to get cast in other kinds of production first of course and she has to want it.
She also does movies inbetween shooting seasons of Hannah Montana, right now that’s still limited to straight to DVD and TV movies. Which is a pity, she started out on the big screen but seems to go for the smaller screen now. If someone like Robert Rodriguez sees something in you there is potential for the big screen. The Hannah Montana movie will of course be on the big screen but she’ll only be co-starring in that. Her next starring role is in the Disney Channel movie Dadnapped, they’re done filming it but as of yet it’s unknown when it will air. It’s actually quite high budget for a TV movie ($4.5M budget) so I’m curious how it turns out.
There is one thing about everything she has done so far though; all of the characters she has played were completely different. Gerti Giggles was an evil little brat who turned good, Lilly Truscott is a normal high school girl/skateboard chick and Cassie is a sort of depressed goth girl (I have to admit that I like Emily better with blonde hair). They all might not be the most complicated characters but still they’re completely different. It takes some acting talent to do it, plenty of actors out there that can only play a single type of character.
Emily also managed to get on the top of the Radio Disney charts, this of course is a very small target audience but it’s still odd that a song that has been out for months suddenly goes to the first spot on that. Even if it’s only a thirteen in a dozen pop song. Emily has indicated in interviews that she’s also writing music, apparently it’s not the standard pop but more of a rock sound. She doesn’t have a record deal yet but a more rocky sound would be welcome in the current climate where all younger female younger artists either just sing pop or R&B (I’m aware of the fact that Miley Cyrus also aspires a more rocky sound with her own music).
So who knows, Hollywood Records has been expanding into different sounds lately (Evans Blue, Plain White T’s) so maybe they’ll give Emily a shot as well. Another young artist that writes her own music is also a good thing, as mentioned before the only one that seems to be doing that from the start is Miley Cyrus. Then again, Miley is the one who taught Emily how to play the guitar so how to write music as well.
My hope for Emily is that after she’s done shooting the Hannah Montana movie that she’ll venture out into more grown up movie projects. Would be interesting to see what her acting abilities will develop like. She can stay on Hannah Montana of course, it’s too good a thing to give up for now and her name isn’t as clearly connected to the show as Miley’s. Still thousands of fans show up when she makes appearances at events, so the show has given her a fanbase.
Who knows when they’ll actually start shooting the movie and the TV show again though; the movie script isn’t done yet and there are no more show scripts So the writer’s strike is hitting Disney quite hard now.
Tags: Emily Osment
