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Michael Keaton drops his stage name for his real name

Vaseline September 5, 2024

Originally published on E! Online

Just don’t say his name three times.

Michael Keaton is ready to return to his roots, more specifically to his birth name. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice star shared that after five decades in show business, playing iconic characters like Batman and Beetlejuice, he wants to use his original nickname—Michael Douglas-again.

Due to Screen Actor’s Guild rules that no two members may have the same name, Keaton was forced to come up with a solution to accommodate both Wall Street actor Michael Douglas and talk show host Mike Douglas.

“I was flipping through – I can’t remember if it was a phone book,” the 72-year-old told People in an interview published on September 4. “I must have thought, ‘I don’t know, let me think of something.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, that sounds reasonable.’”

Keaton plans to be professionally recognized in the future as Michael Keaton Douglasa combination of his stage name and his real name.

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The Oscar-nominated actor said he planned to use the new name for his 2023 film Knox is leavingwhich he directed and starred in, but he noted that he simply “forgot” about it amid the chaos of making the film.

“I said, ‘Hey, just as a heads up, my credit goes to Michael Keaton Douglas.’ And it completely slipped my mind,” he said. “And I forgot to give them enough time to put it in and create it. But that’s what’s going to happen.”

Keaton is not the first Hollywood star to decide to revert to his birth name in a professional setting. Emma Steenwho coincidentally starred with Keaton in the 2014 film Birdmanpreviously announced that she would return to using her first name Emily.

“That would be so nice,” she said The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published on April 24. “I would like to be Emily.”

Stone said several of her colleagues are already doing that.

“When I get to know them, people I work with do too,” she explained. “I was freaking out a couple of years ago. For some reason I was like, ‘I can’t do this anymore. Just call me Emily.'”

Read on for more celebrities who changed their real names.

Katherine Elizabeth Hudson