Michael Keaton is once again the “ghost with the most” but one thing he isn’t is Michael Keaton.
The “Beetlejuice” actor wants to return to his original name, which happens to be shared with another A-lister, Michael Douglas.
But to clear up the confusion between the two, he wants to instead go by Michael Keaton Douglas, combining his real name with his stage moniker, he told People magazine.
He said he wanted to make the change for “Knox Goes Away,” which he directed, but he said he “forgot.”
“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,” Keaton said.
“Knox Goes Away” is streaming on Max. He also stars in the film about a hit man with dementia.
So how did he decide to swap Douglas with Keaton originally?
He actually had to change his name because the Screen Actors Guild allows only one member to use a professional name. There were already two - Michael Douglas and Mike Douglas, a talk show host.
Hollywood legend said he picked it out of a phone book in the 1970s, but now nearly 50 years later, he said he isn’t so sure that’s exactly how it happened.
“I was looking through — I can’t remember if it was a phone book,” the 72-year-old actor told People. “I must’ve gone, ‘I don’t know, let me think of something here.’ And I went, ‘Oh, that sounds reasonable.’”
The sequel to “Beetlejuice” comes out about 35 years after the original, premiered Friday. “Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice” stars original castmembers Keaton, Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara, along with Jenna Ortega, Monica Bellucci, Justin Theroux and Willem Dafoe who are new to the “Beetlejuice” family and is once again directed and produced by Tim Burton.
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