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Beetlejuice star Michael Keaton is going back to using his real name, which happens to be the same as another Hollywood actor.
The 73-year-old, has reprised his role as the troublesome ghost and bio-exorcist for his forthcoming movie Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, directed by Tim Burton.
The film, which is set to be released in cinemas on 6 September, is the sequel to Burton’s beloved 1988 horror comedy Beetlejuice. A number of the original cast are set to return, including Winona Ryder as Lydia Deetz and Schitt’s Creek star Catherine O’Hara as her mother Delia Deetz.
Keaton told People that he had picked his name out of a phone book when he was starting out in Hollywood in the 1970s. The Screen Actors Guild prohibits members from using the same name as another professional actor, and Keaton was forced to drop his birth name as a result.
Now, decades later, he wants to go back to his origins.
“I said, ‘Hey, just as a warning, my credit is going to be Michael Keaton Douglas,’” Keaton said about his new movie, Knox Goes Away, which he directed.
However, he said, “It totally got away from me. And I forgot to give them enough time to put it in and create that.”
He promised, “But that will happen.”
Michael Douglas, 79, is the son of three-time Academy Award nominee Kirk Douglas and is married to Best Supporting Actress winner Catherine Zeta-Jones. He is known for his roles on Wall Street (1987), Fatal Attraction (1987), The War of the Roses (1989), Basic Instinct (1992),and Traffic (2000).
Recalling how he picked the name he eventually became famous for, Keaton said, “I was looking through – I can’t remember if it was a phone book.”
He continued, “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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Keaton has commented on having the same name as Douglas before, and told Terry Wogan in a 1992 interview, “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, “I finally met Michael Douglas, he’s a good guy actually.”
But, he added “that’s not even his real name! I’m the only one who had the name. That’s the irony here.”
Douglas’s father, Issur Danielovitch, was forced to Americanise his surname in a bid to assimilate.
