Michael Keaton Finally Wants To Go By His Famous Real Name

By Andrew Sanford | Celebrity | September 5, 2024 |

By Andrew Sanford | Celebrity | September 5, 2024 |

Hollywood can be a silly place (yeah, I said it). Everything is about appearances and who you know. And who you think you know may not be the person they say they are. I’m not talking about stolen identity but let’s be honest, that’s bound to have happened at one point or another. I speak of name changes. Folks in Hollywood have carefully curated lives and their names are a big part of that.

People change their names in Hollywood for all manner of reasons. The simplest explanation is often that they want their name to be catchy. That isn’t always the answer. Arnold Schwarzenegger was famously told that his name would not fit on a marquee so he should change it. Whoever told him that was very wrong. People have also changed their names to hide where they came from (religiously or culturally). Another reason a new person in Hollywood would change their name is that … someone else already has that name.

That was the case for Michael Keaton. The comedian and actor was one of the hottest comedic performers of the 1980s. He turned in iconic performances such as Beetlejuice, Batman, and Johnny Dangerously (a personal favorite). Keaton’s legacy has held strong decades later. He’s spent the last decade getting handed his flowers at every turn. But the question remains: would he have had the same amount of success if he went by his government name Michael John Douglas?

If that name sounds familiar, it’s because there were already two successful fellas going by that name when Keaton first started. If that name doesn’t sound familiar, please enjoy Jen’s write-up of the trailer for The Minecraft Movie. Keaton knew it would be hard to make headway as a man who already existed so he picked a new name. “I was looking through — I can’t remember if it was a phone book,” he explained to PEOPLE. “I must’ve gone, ‘I don’t know, let me think of something here.’ And I went, ‘Oh, that sounds reasonable.’”

While Keaton made the change all those decades ago, he’s finally ready to reclaim his birth name. The actor intends to be credited differently going forward. “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,” the actor explained. It has a nice ring to it! It’s also nice to hear someone get to reclaim their identity in a way. Hollywood can feel fake sometimes (gasp), so a little authenticity is always welcome.