Michael Keaton has made quite a name for himself in the entertainment industry. He gained early recognition as a comedy actor in films like Mr. Mom and Beetlejuice. Then, Keaton branched out in dramas with the Batman movies, Spotlight, and his Oscar-nominated performance in Birdman. While the world knows Keaton as one name for almost five decades in show business, he said going forward he would like to go by his real name.
The veteran actor’s birth name is Michael John Douglas. But as you may already know, we already have Basic Instinct’s Michael Douglas and talk show host Mike Douglas. As the Screen Actors Guild prohibits members from having the same professional name, Michael Keaton told People what made him pick his long-running stage name:
“I was looking through — I can’t remember if it was a phone book,” said Keaton. “I must’ve gone, ‘I don’t know, let me think of something here.’ And I went, ‘Oh, that sounds reasonable.’”
After almost five decades of entertaining us in film and television roles, Michael Keaton has decided that he wants to be credited by his birth name instead. The Dopesick actor was going to credit himself as Michael Keaton Douglas for his recent director’s project Knox Goes Away, but the thought escaped him due to the stress of filming:
“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.”
What upcoming projects does Michael Keaton have?
Michael Keaton currently has Beetlejuice Beetlejuice coming to theaters this weekend. But, his next upcoming project is a comedy movie with Mila Kunis called Goodrich. He plays an art dealer whose second wife leaves him to go to a 90-day rehab. This leads him to ask his estranged adult daughter to help him take care of his nine-year-old twins. You can expect to see his new comedy hit theaters on October 18th.
The Golden Globe winner may go by “Michael Keaton” in both the Beetlejuice sequel and Goodrich. But, it looks like it’s only a matter of time until we’ll see “Michael Keaton Douglas” on movie posters soon.