Michael Keaton Real Name Is Michael Douglas, Considers Changing It

Michael Keaton is back on the big screen in Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” which is aiming to clear the $100 million mark in its opening weekend at the domestic box office. The long-awaited sequel might be the last time the Oscar-nominated actor is officially credited as Michael Keaton, which has been his stage name since the start of his career in 1978.

Speaking to People magazine for a new cover story, Keaton said that he plans to change his official acting credit to something that hews closer to his birth name: Michael Douglas. Keaton could not use his real name when he was getting his Screen Actors Guild card in the late 1970s because there already was a Michael Douglas in Hollywood (and a very well known one, at that). And the name “Mike Douglas” was taken by a talk show host.

“I was looking through — I can’t remember if it was a phone book,” Keaton said about landing on his stage last name. “I must’ve gone, ‘I don’t know, let me think of something here.’ And I went, ‘Oh, that sounds reasonable.’”

Keaton said that moving forward he would like to use a hybrid of both names as his official acting credit: Michael Keaton Douglas. He revealed that he wanted to use this credit on his directorial effort “Knox Goes Away,” which he also starred in, but he forgot about it.

“I said, ‘Hey, just as a warning, my credit is going to be Michael Keaton Douglas.’ And it totally got away from me,” Keaton said. “And I forgot to give them enough time to put it in and create that. But that will happen.”

Keaton starred in “Knox Goes Away” as a hit man trying to make amends with his son before his dementia takes over. The supporting cast included James Marsden, Suzy McKinnon, Marcia Gay Harden and Al Pacino. From Variety’s review: “‘Knox Goes Away’ is a silky and entrancing thriller directed by its star. In addition to being a noir that holds you exactly the way a noir should, it may be one of the best dramas about dementia I’ve ever seen…As a hit-man thriller, ‘Knox Goes Away,’ in my opinion, leaves David Fincher’s meticulously engineered but rather hollow ‘The Killer’ in the dust. That’s because Keaton, in every scene, blends execution with humanity.

Whatever comes next in his career, fans might be seeing Micheal Keaton Douglas in the credits. “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” officially starring Michael Keaton, opens in theaters Sept. 6 from Warner Bros.