Michael Keaton was forced to change his name when he started in the entertainment industry.
Originally appeared on E! Online
Just don’t say his name three times.
Michael Keaton is ready to return to his roots, more specifically, his birth name. The "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" star shared that after five decades in show business playing several iconic characters like Batman and Beetlejuice, he wants to use his original moniker—Michael Douglas—again.
Due to the Screen Actor’s Guild’s rules that no two members can have the same name, Keaton was forced to come up with a solution due to both "Wall Street" actor Michael Douglas and talk show host Mike Douglas.
“I was looking through—I can’t remember if it was a phone book,” the 72-year-old recalled to People in an interview published Sept. 4. “I must’ve gone, ‘I don’t know, let me think of something here.’ And I went, ‘Oh, that sounds reasonable.’”
Moving forward, Keaton plans to be credited professionally as Michael Keaton Douglas, a combination of his stage name and his real name.
The Oscar-nominated actor said he planned to use the new name on his 2023 film "Knox Goes Away," which he directed and starred in, but noted that he simply “forgot” amid the chaos of making the film.
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“I said, ‘Hey, just as a warning, my credit is going to be Michael Keaton Douglas.’ And it totally got away from me,” he shared. “And I forgot to give them enough time to put it in and create that. But that will happen.”
Keaton isn’t the first Hollywood A-lister to decide to revert back to their birth name in a professional setting. Emma Stone, who coincidentally starred alongside Keaton in 2014’s "Birdman," previously announced her intentions of returning to her first name of Emily.
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"That would be so nice," she told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published April 24. "I would like to be Emily."
In fact, Stone said that several of her colleagues already do.
"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.'"
