Keaton couldn’t shorten his name to Mike Douglas, because that name was already taken, thanks to the famous talk show host from the 60s and 70s.

So he looked elsewhere for a stage name.

“I looked through – I can’t remember if it was a phone book,” Keaton told People Recently, while promoting his new film, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” “I must have thought, ‘I don’t know, let me think of something.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, that sounds reasonable.'”

And Michael Keaton was born.

Keaton told People that he had planned to finally change his name for his 2023 thriller, “Knox Goes Away,” which he also directed. But it was too late when he finally decided to pull the trigger.

“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.”

His name appears as Michael Keaton in the credits for “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”

Keaton is the latest in a growing list of stars who have publicly stated how they want to be addressed.

In 2021, Anne Hathaway revealed on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” that people should call her “anything but Anne” because even though that’s her legal name, everyone calls her Annie.

Earlier this year, Emma Stone said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that her first name is actually Emily and that she would like to be called that instead of Emma.

“I was in a complete panic a few years ago. For some reason I was like, ‘I can’t do this anymore. Just call me Emily,'” she said.