Michael Keaton has revealed that he would like people to call him by his real name – however, this presents a problem as his real name is shared by another Hollywood star.
The actor, whose new film Beetlejuice Beetlejuice arrives in cinemas tomorrow (September 6), told People that he’d like to be known by his real name professionally – which is Michael Douglas, the same as the star of Fatal Attraction and Wall Street.
Despite the confusion sharing a name with another A-lister may cause, he’s said there is a solution that he thinks could work – being known instead as Michael Keaton Douglas.
He told People, “I said, ‘Hey, just as a warning, my credit is going to be Michael Keaton Douglas,’” about his work on the film Knox Goes Away, which he recently directed. He added: “It totally got away from me. And I forgot to give them enough time to put it in and create that. But that will happen,” he added, saying going forwards he would like to use his real name more.
He went on to quote Screen Actors Guild mandates, which forbid a performer signing a contract if their name is the name of another registered member – and how this led him to come up with the name ‘Keaton’. “I was looking through — I can’t remember if it was a phone book,” he said, “I must’ve gone, ‘I don’t know, let me think of something here.’ And I went, ‘Oh, that sounds reasonable.’”
Recently, Emma Stone was another Hollywood actor who expressed a desire to be known by her real name and not her stage name.
The Poor Things actress, whose real name is Emily Jean Stone, recently explained that, despite taking the name “Emma” when she first joined the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), she would once again like to be called Emily.
“That would be so nice,” she told The Hollywood Reporter in a new interview. “I would like to be Emily.”
Stone explained that she had to take the name “Emma Stone” when joining the SAG because there was already another actress called “Emily Stone” registered with the union.
She went on to say, however, that some people in Hollywood have actually started using her real name. “When I get to know them, people that I work with do,” she explained. “I freaked out a couple of years ago. For some reason, I was like, ‘I can’t do it anymore. Just call me Emily.’”
Back in 2018, Stone revealed that she chose the stage name “Emma” due to her obsession with Emma Bunton (aka Baby Spice) from the Spice Girls.
“Growing up I was super blonde,” she explained on an episode of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, “and my real is Emily, but I wanted to be called Emma because of Baby Spice and guess what! Now I am. So that’s like pretty messed up.”
She continued: “It wasn’t necessarily because of her, but yes, in second grade did I go up to the teacher on the first day and ask her to call me Emma? Yes I did. Was it because of Emma Lee Bunton from the Spice Girls? Yes it was.”