Michael Keaton is ready to drop his stage name and return to his real name, Michael Douglas.
After decades in the industry, the 73-year-old Beetlejuice star, originally named Michael John Douglas, has figured out how to integrate his birth name into his professional identity.
The acting icon was previously unable to use his birth name due to Screen Actors Guild rules that prevent members from using the names of other established stars.
Unfortunately for Keaton, Oscar-winning actor Michael Douglas, 79, had already claimed the name.
As a result, Keaton plans to use the name Michael Keaton Douglas for future projects. However, due to timing issues, his credit in the Beetlejuice sequel will still appear as Michael Keaton.
He told PEOPLE magazine: "I mentioned that my credit would be Michael Keaton Douglas, but I didn't manage to make the change in time.
“It slipped through the cracks, but it will be updated in future projects.”
Reflecting on how he chose “Keaton,” he said: “I was flipping through a phone book or something similar, and I just thought, ‘That sounds reasonable.’”
His comments come after he praised director Tim Burton for standing by the decision to cast him in 1989 film Batman, despite a huge backlash at the time.
US actor Keaton was reunited with Burton on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Tuesday, where the filmmaker received a star in recognition of his decades-long career in the film industry.
Burton’s directorial debut Pee-wee’s Big Adventure in 1985, starring the late Paul Reubens, was a hit and he went on to make comedy thriller Beetlejuice, starring Keaton in the title role alongside Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara.
The filmmaker next cast Keaton as superhero Batman, sparking controversy as Keaton was primarily known as a comedic actor at the time.
Addressing the Batman furore during the Walk of Fame ceremony, Keaton said: “He (Burton) hands me a script and says ‘Please read this and tell me what you think’. Now this is after Beetlejuice, after that performance, after that type of movie.
“And he says to the studio ‘I want that guy’ and I’ll never to this day understand why anyone even cared, but the uproar, you would have thought we were being invaded.
“It was unbelievable, the press went crazy, but he stuck by me, and the guts it took for him to make that decision will always be special to me.
“But also what that spawned. There are a lot of people making a lot of money out there with their superhero movies because of his choice and his vision of what those movies can be, because he changed everything.”
Keaton described Burton as a “genre unto himself” who has an “openness to ideas and creativity” while also having a “wonderful lack of pretension”.
The 72-year-old went on to star in Burton’s 1992 action blockbuster follow-up Batman Returns, with both films becoming a huge success at the box office.
Keaton will next star in the much-anticipated sequel to Burton’s 1988 hit film Beetlejuice, which opened the 81st edition of the Venice International Film Festival last week to a lengthy standing ovation.
It marks a reunion for Keaton, Ryder and O’Hara, who reprised their roles in the sequel, alongside new stars Jenna Ortega, Monica Bellucci and Willem Dafoe.
