Entertainment
17 Celebrities You Didn’t Know Changed Their Last Names
Sure, I know that a lot of my favorite celebrities use stage names, because that's unfortunately just (forgive the pun) the name of the game. The Hollywood bigheads might shy away from names that might be too hard to pronounce, too long, or that may be deemed too "difficult" for the general public, whatever that means. In some cases, there is already another actor or famous scientist who has made the name known, so aspiring celebrities have to tweak theirs a bit. And sometimes, this means just changing their last name, rather than switching up their first.
So, without further adieu, here are 17 celebrities who kept their first names, but decided to change their last names for that extra "star quality." Many of these might come as a shock, so bravo to these celebs for picking a name that embodies their stage persona so well.
Olivia Wilde
Unfortunately, Cockburn might have given the wrong impression to casting directors when she was just starting out her career…
Nicole Richie
This one is pretty self-explanatory. Nicole started going by Richie to honor her adoptive father, Lionel Richie.
George Michael
Real name: Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou.
Greek names are notoriously long and difficult to pronounce for many non-Greek speakers, so he got rid of his last names entirely and added a very common first name, Michael.
Kat Dennings
Litwack doesn’t quite roll off the tongue. Try saying in five times in a row.
Albert Brooks
Yes, I had to confirm this one multiple times because it was just too good. It is quite fitting for a comedian, though.
Julianne Moore
Moore explained her professional name change to The Hollywood Reporter, “When I went to join SAG as Julie Smith, they were like, ‘There’s a Julie Smith, there’s a Julie Anne Smith. You have to choose another name… My dad’s name was Peter Moore Smith, and my mother’s name was Anne Smith, and I used both their names so I wouldn’t hurt anybody’s feelings.”
Michael Keaton
Well, there’s already another famous Michael Douglas and Keaton seemed to work well for Diane…
Alicia Keys
I am just going to keep believing that she was born as a “Keys,” and that her name sealed her fate as a piano player.
Jonathan Rhys-Meyers
Real name: Jonathan Michal Francis O’Keefe.
Rhys-Meyers changed his name to really separate his actor self and his “real self,” and Johnny O’Keefe didn’t have the ring to it that he wanted. He told The Independent, “Jonathan Rhys-Meyers was the name I wanted the world to know me by, and not my birth name… I wanted to create almost this different person, which I suppose doesn’t really exist.”
Winona Ryder
I would love to share a name with Cher Horowitz. Winona, however, didn’t.
Ralph Lauren
He told Oprah Winfrey in an interview, “My given name has the word ‘s--t’ in it… When I was a kid, the other kids would make a lot of fun of me. It was a tough name. That’s why I decided to change it. Then people said, ‘Did you change your name because you don’t want to be Jewish?’ I said, ‘Absolutely not. That’s not what it’s about.’”
Courtney Love
Add Love to any name, and it’s an instant stage name.
Natalie Portman
Natalie decided to pay homage to her grandmother’s maiden name.
Diane Keaton
She actually shared a last name with her most famous character, Annie Hall.
Joaquin Phoenix
Doesn’t quite have that majestic ring to it, does it?
Miranda July
Real name: Miranda Grossinger.
You don’t really want "gross" to be anywhere in your name. Kids can be mean.
Katy Perry
Katy Perry famously started off as a Christian singer under her birth name, Katy Hudson. She changed it as she got more recognition, since it was too similar to Kate Hudson.
