Michael Keaton had to use a stage name because his real name, Michael Douglas, was taken by an already famous movie star, and his nickname, Mike Douglas, was taken by a talkshow host. However, he’s glad he didn’t go with his first choice, Michael Jackson!

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She told Vogue, "My mom was called [Gigi] as a kid by her mother when she was younger, but only around the house. I was called that around the house when I was really young, kind of like how my mom was called it."

He told the Guardian, "Faced with the prospect of working under two different names on either side of the globe, I had to take the plunge and rename myself! So, although I always liked the name, I'm now more intimately associated with it than I had ever imagined."

He told the Radio Times, "I suppose it says more about the 1960s than anything else. But the irony is, of course, I changed my clunky invented Asian name to a more pronounceable, and acceptable, universal name in order to play Mahatma Gandhi. There’s your irony."

She told the Daily Beast, "The first audition I went on after I changed my name, I got booked. ... I want to be clear because some of my Asian American fans seem to think I [changed last names] because I didn't want to [be] known as Chinese, but it's so the opposite. I just wanted to be known as me and let my personality define who I was, rather than my ethnicity."

Yvonne Strahovski at "The Handmaid's Tale" Los Angeles Special FYC Screening held at the DGA Theater on May 28, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by JC Olivera/Variety via Getty Images)

She told Collider, "But I kept thinking, if everyone could get past Schwarzenegger and learn how to say that, then surely they can learn how to say my name as well. It just always rubbed me the wrong way to change it to something completely different, which was suggested, so I kind of went for this phonetic spelling version. Yeah, it was a cultural thing back then that’s something that I don't think that I would do now if I were to start now and move forward."

After being dropped by MCA Records, he altered his stage name to John Cougar. Then, a few successful albums laters, he changed it to John Cougar Mellencamp. Finally, nearly two decades into his career, he reclaimed the name John Mellencamp professionally.

She told W Magazine, "I landed a guest spot on Malcolm in the Middle, and one day they were calling, 'Riley! Riley! Riley! We need you on set, Riley!' and I had no idea who they were talking to. At that moment, I realized that I just couldn't be Riley." 

He chose the J as a tribute to actor Michael J. Pollard.

He told Closer Weekly, "The only influence I had on [my son] Emilio was to keep his name. When he started out, his agent was advising him to change his name to Sheen, and he wouldn't do it. And I thank God he didn't."

He told the Chicago Tribune, "I wish I hadn't changed my name, to tell you the truth. I like my name. It sounds like I look."

On The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, he said, "My middle name's John. [His family] used to call me Johnny Jackson. I thought, 'You know, I'm gonna put Michael Jackson down.' Can you imagine?"

He ultimately decided on Keaton because he was looking through the K section of an alphabetical list of names.