Michael Keaton Announces He Wants To Start Using His Real Name
Michael Keaton’s going back to his roots.
The “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” actor recently told People he plans to revert to a version of his birth name, Michael Douglas, for future projects.
When he was starting out in his career in the ’70s, he chose a stage name because of a Screen Actors Guild rule that prohibits members from using the same professional name as another member.
The SAG already had a Michael Douglas — the Oscar-winning “Wall Street” actor — and a Mike Douglas, so Keaton had to get creative.
“I was looking through — I can’t remember if it was a phone book,” he told People. “I must’ve gone, ‘I don’t know, let me think of something here.’ And I went, ‘Oh, that sounds reasonable.’”
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Going forward, he wants to go by Michael Keaton Douglas. He said he intended to do so on last year’s “Knox Goes Away,” which