Michael Keaton is reverting to his birth name, Michael Douglas, after years of using his stage name due to SAG restrictions in the 1970s.
At the time, the union already had Michael Douglas, who would go on to become an Oscar-winning actor, and Mike Douglas, the talk show host.
It has long been said that to find a stage name, Keaton, 72, picked something out of a phone book before making it in Hollywood — which he loosely confirmed in an interview with People while revealing his plans to go back to using his birth name.
"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.' "
Although Keaton has enjoyed success with his stage name, he plans to switch to a hybrid of his birth name and stage name — Michael Keaton Douglas — for future projects. Speaking with People, Keaton said he planned to use this name for his recent film "Knox Goes Away," but "forgot" due to the pressures of directing.
"I said, 'Hey, just as a warning, my credit is going to be Michael Keaton Douglas.' And 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 continued.
Keaton previously spoke about sharing the same name as Douglas during a 1992 interview with Terry Wogan.
"There were already two people in the union with the name Michael Douglas, I got a job and contractually you couldn't have people of the same name," he said, according to the Independent.
"I finally met Michael Douglas, he's a good guy actually," Keaton continued, adding, "That's not even his real name! I'm the only one who had the name. That's the irony here."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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