Michael Keaton’s Unexpected Name Change Has Fans Scratching Their Heads

If you kept up with Emma Stone this past awards show season, then you know that she’s been open about not being the biggest fan of her stage name , Emma, and likes to be called by her real name, Emily. As it turns out, the Oscar winner had to change her name at the beginning of her career because someone else in the Screen Actors Guild had already taken it. And, as surprising as it is, Stone isn’t the only star who had to improvise another name against their will.

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In a new interview with Michael Keaton , the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice star opened up to People about choosing his last name out of a phone book when he ran into the same issue with SAG in the 1970s. For those who don’t know, Keaton’s real name is Michael Douglas, a name that had already been chosen by Basic Instinct star Michael Douglas.

“I was looking through — I can’t remember if it was a phone book,” Keaton told the outlet. “I must’ve gone, ‘I don’t know, let me think of something here.’ And I went, ‘Oh, that sounds reasonable.’”

But now, decades into his award-winning career, Keaton is regretting his decision. As a result, he now wants to be called by a hybrid of his real and stage name: Michael Keaton Douglas.

In his 2024 movie Knox Goes Away , for example, Keaton even asked for his name to be updated in the credit sequence. “I said, ‘Hey, just as a warning, my credit is going to be Michael Keaton Douglas.’ And it totally got away from me,” he said, adding that it was too late in the process for the editor to change it. “And I forgot to give them enough time to put it in and create that. But that will happen.”

On social media, fans are scratching their heads over the news. After all, we’ve gotten used to saying “Michael Keaton” for decades now. “Buddy, it’s a little too late,” wrote one X user. “Michael Keaton Douglas? That’s one way to confuse Hollywood even more,” wrote another. “Maybe he should just stick to being Batman!”

For Stone, she sees her stage name as just a professional thing but is called Emily by anyone who knows her well. “When I get to know them, people that I work with do [call me Emily],” she told The Hollywood Reporter . “It’s just because my name was taken [by another actress in SAG].”

But she’s freaked about the name dilemma too. “Then I freaked out a couple of years ago,” she said. “For some reason, I was like, ‘I can’t do it anymore. Just call me Emily.’”

Looks like the stage name versus real name debacle is really taking over Hollywood!