15 Actors Who Changed Their Names For Hollywood

“What’s in a name?” William Shakespeare’s Juliet once asked. “That which we call a rose, by any other word would smell as sweet.” That may be true, as far as it goes, but would an A-List actor by any other name sell as many box office tickets?

An actor’s name is their brand, so choosing the right name to attach your career to is of the utmost importance. An actor’s name can signal all sorts of things to an audience — familiarity or friendliness, sexiness or masculinity. Some names signal cultural identity, while others are designed to be as bland as possible so as to avoid drawing the wrong sort of attention from a prejudiced crowd. Actors may even adopt different names for simplicity’s sake, or to craft an identity wholly separate from their private lives. With all that in mind, read on to learn about fifteen actors who changed their names for Hollywood.

Natalie Portman has been famous since she was quite young. The child star acted in films like “Léon: The Professional,” “Heat,” and “Mars Attacks” in the 1990s. Then, her starring role as Queen Amidala in the “Star Wars” prequels made her a household name (though she struggled to find work after that role).

That’s not, however, the name she was born with. The future “Black Swan” star was born in Israel in 1981, and she was raised as “Natalie Hershlag.” Portman continued to go by her birth name at school, hoping to separate her real life from her budding film career. She later reflected in an interview with Vanity Fair, “I would get upset if someone at school called me Natalie Portman. I was like, if you know me, you know me as Natalie Hershlag at school.”

Nowadays, Portman acknowledges that they are not two separate people. She mused, “I felt like it was not accepting that both were part of me, that there wasn’t a ‘real’ me and a ‘pretend’ me, and that they didn’t necessarily have different names.”

River Phoenix was one of the biggest rising stars of the 1980s and 1990s. Roles in films like “Stand By Me” and “My Own Private Idaho” made him an exciting talent to watch, cementing Phoenix as a Hollywood legend even before his untimely death at the age of 23.

In the decades since his death, his younger brother Joaquin Phoenix has risen to the top of Hollywood’s A-List. When audiences first met River’s younger brother, however — in the cheesy sci-fi romp “Space Camp” – the future Oscar winner was credited as “Leaf Phoenix.” That’s actually not his real name, as he was born Joaquin, but he decided to change his name to match his siblings’ nature-focused names.

“My brother and sisters all had the gorgeous names, and I got Joaquin,” he told Philip Berk. “So I said, this is not good.” However, after a trip to Mexico, the “Joker” star realized his birth name was actually easier. “River was the one that insisted that I change it back,” he revealed. “He just thought it was such a great name, and so I said okay, I would.”

Before the Princess Diana version, Elton John’s “Candle In The Wind” was about the tragic death of Marilyn Monroe. “Goodbye Norma Jeane,” he sang. “They crawled out of the woodwork / And they whispered into your brain / They set you on the treadmill / And they made you change your name.”

The singer is correct; Marilyn Monroe was a stage name, a moniker used by a woman who was born Norma Jeane Mortenson. As a teenager, after her mother married, she would go by Norma Jeane Baker; later, after she herself married, she went by Norma Jeane Dougherty. Then Hollywood came calling. A studio executive named Ben Lyon was tasked with helping the ingenue come up with a more seductive stage name, and they chose “Monroe” together because it was a family name. He suggested Marilyn, after one of Ziegfield’s girls, and a Hollywood legend was born.

Monroe later autographed a photo of them together. She wrote (via TIME), “Dear Ben, You found me, named me and believed in me when no one else did.”

Long before she spent many years as one of the main co-hosts on “The View,” Whoopi Goldberg made her name as a standup comedian and then went on to star in films like “Sister Act” and “Ghost.” The “Star Trek: The Next Generation” star was actually born Caryn Johnson, and she renamed herself at the start of her comedy career

Initially, she wanted her stage name to be “Whoopee Cushione,” as though it were French. That didn’t fly with her family. In an interview on “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” she recalled, “My mother said, ‘Are you crazy? … You’re diminishing your abilities. And if you call yourself by Whoopee Cushion, people are not going to … appreciate what you can do.'”

She kept the “Whoopi,” spelling it slightly different than the flatulent children’s toy. Her new last name, on the other hand, was chosen to honor what she told Reuters (via Playbill) was her Jewish ancestry. “The true story is that my family is Jewish, Buddhist, Baptist and Catholic — none of which I subscribe to, by the way, as I don’t believe in man-made religions … So I took the last name from a Jewish ancestor.”

When an actor joins up with the Screen Actors Guild, they have to select a name that isn’t already in use. In the 1970s, that tripped up a young actor named Michael Douglas, a promising talent who would go on to play Batman, Birdman, The Vulture, and other non-animal-based roles. “Michael Douglas” already belonged to a famous actor — the star of “Wall Street” and son of Kirk Douglas — so this other Michael Douglas decided that he needed to pick a new name. He selected “Keaton” out of a phone book.

It’s a move that he would later come to regret, even though he made quite the name for himself as “Michael Keaton.” It wasn’t until 2024 that the actor confessed a desire to start going by “Michael Keaton Douglas,” decades into his career. He told People that when he directed “Knox Goes Away,” a film about an aging hitman, he planned to be credited by his birth name. “I said, ‘Hey, just as a warning, my credit is going to be Michael Keaton Douglas,'” he revealed. “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.”

“Dove Cameron” is the perfect name for a Disney Princess. The actor who sports that moniker has been a Disney Channel veteran for more than a decade, ever since she starred on “Liv & Maddie” in both titular roles. She took her career to a new level when she played Mal — daughter of Maleficent — in the hit Disney Channel Original Movie franchise “Descendants.”

The “Boyfriend” singer wasn’t born with such a fitting name, however; instead, it comes from a nickname her father used to call her when she was younger. After he died, Cameron decided to legally change her name from “Chloe” to “Dove” in recognition of his impact on her life. She told her fans on X, formerly Twitter, “He took his own life when I was 15, I didn’t get to say goodbye, so I changed it in honor of him.”

Years before she directed films like “Booksmart” and “Don’t Worry Darling,” fans first met Olivia Wilde as an actor on a number of hit 2000s television shows. She took the second season of “The O.C.” by storm, kissing both Adam Brody and Mischa Barton, and it’s hard to explain the delicious bisexual chaos of that storyline if you weren’t there to witness it. After leaving “The O.C.,” she jumped to another FOX show, starring as Thirteen on 81 episodes of “House M.D.”

Wilde wasn’t always Wilde, however. She was born Olivia Cockburn, and she decided to pick a new name when she got into showbiz. “My mother thought it was a good idea for me as well, so I could have my own identity outside of my family. She suggested I pick something Irish and something that I’d always be inspired by,” she told The Observer. That turned out to be writer Oscar Wilde. “Oscar Wilde is someone who I respect for so many reasons — a revolutionary, a comedian and a profound thinker,” she said. “I had all these reasons — but what I didn’t foresee is that people would think of it as a sexy adjective. So now it’s got a pornographic quality I never considered.”

There can be many benefits to entering Hollywood with a famous name. Though people these days are on edge, thanks to the concept of “nepo babies,” a famous name can open doors, making people sit up and take notice of an unproven talent.

It can also be a curse, as Nicolas Coppola learned when he auditioned repeatedly for a lead role in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” The actor — the nephew of famed director Francis Ford Coppola — told The Huffington Post that he felt his famous name hampered him at first. “I was surrounded by actors, whose names I won’t mention, who were not very open to the idea of a young guy named ‘Coppola’ being an actor,” he said. “So that movie was instrumental in me changing my name because of the kind of unfortunate responses to my last name.”

Instead of going by Nicolas Coppola, he decided to switch his name to Nicolas Cage, and the rest is Hollywood history. He told WUSF that everything changed after “Valley Girl.” “It was the first time that I went into an audition with my new name and I got the part,” he said. “That was hugely empowering for me to believe I could do it on my own steam.” 

For most of her career, Thandiwe Newton was credited as “Thandie.” That’s how she showed up in the credits of everything from “Crash” and “Interview with the Vampire” to more recent roles like “Westworld” and “Solo: A Star Wars Story.”

In 2021, however, Newton announced that she’d like to go back to being known by her birth name. It turned out that Newton’s very first credit had been misspelled, and she’d been made to go along with the typo for the rest of her career. In an interview with Vogue, Newton insisted that she was done turning a blind eye to that sort of disrespect. “Thandiwe” it was, from then on. “That’s my name. It’s always been my name,” she said. “I’m taking back what’s mine.”

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Newton elaborated on where that other name came from. “The director of my first film asked to use my actual name for the character — because it was authentic and beautiful. I felt flattered and agreed,” she wrote. “And then in the credits they used my ‘nickname’ to differentiate from the character name. They stole my name. And I’m taking it back.”

In 2018, upon the premiere of the hotly-anticipated “Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again,” the iconic Cher celebrated the release of the film in a series of characteristically quirky tweets. “Well [chick emojis],” she wrote, “it was a GREAT NITE… I [heart emoji] EVERYONE IN THE FILM,& EVERYONE WHO WORKED ON THE FILM…..ESPECIALLY MARY LOUISE STREEP.”

Mary Louise Streep?! Sure enough, that’s three-time Oscar winner Meryl Streep’s birth name, which nearly nobody calls her now, save for Cher. The “Sophie’s Choice” star told “The Graham Norton Show” that all the first daughters in her family were named “Mary,” so a childhood nickname stuck with her. “I was always called Meryl,” she said. “My father made that name up and he liked that name, so. I hated it.” She’d always wished her name was “Patty” or “Cathy” instead, but eventually, she grew to accept her nickname. “I had glasses,” she said, “and my name was Meryl.”

Many people who are aware of “The West Wing” star Martin Sheen can probably guess that there’s something unusual about the actor’s name. After all, he spawned an acting dynasty of his own, as his son Charlie Sheen was famous in his own right even before his trouble with addiction made international news. Sheen is also the father of Brat Pack star Emilio Estevez, however, who uses a different last name than his brother and dad.

While Charlie adopted his father’s stage surname, Emilio kept his family’s legal last name. Martin Sheen, after all, was born Ramón Estévez, and that’s the name he still uses, as far as the government’s concerned. In an interview with Closer, the “Badlands” star explained, “It’s still Ramón Estévez on my birth certificate. It’s on my marriage license, my passport, driver’s license.” These days, he wishes he’d never adopted a stage name. “Sometimes you get persuaded when you don’t have enough insight or even enough courage to stand up for what you believe in,” he said, “and you pay for it later.”

Though she spends much of her time as a popstar these days, the world first met Miley Cyrus as an actor. She still acts occasionally — including playing a role based on a real-life woman in 2024’s “Drive-Away Dolls” – but we first got to know Cyrus as the Disney Channel’s “Hannah Montana.” She played a girl with a dual identity: quirky teenager by day, pop superstar by night. It was a fitting role for Cyrus, as she’d adopted a stage name of her own to play the part.

Miley Cyrus is the daughter of country singer Billy Ray Cyrus, who played her dad on the Disney show. When she was born, Billy Ray named his daughter Destiny Hope Cyrus. She was a smiley kid, though, and somewhere along the way, “Smiley” became “Miley.”

“No matter what you call her, she still is Destiny Hope,” the “Old Town Road” singer told Us Weekly. “She is a ray of sunshine. She is a special human being. She’s got a great heart.”

At the height of the studio system, new actors were often given stage names by their agents, their personalities shaped into something that would be broadly palatable to the moviegoing public. No one was better at this than Henry Willson, the legendary agent who crafted names like “Rock Hudson,” “Rory Calhoun,” and “Guy Madison,” turning his talented young clients into matinee idols swooned over by the world.

In the early 1950s, a young man named Arthur Gelien moved to Hollywood in search of an acting career. Willson snatched him up and named him Tab Hunter, in recognition of the fact that they needed to “tab him” with a new name and also his love of riding horses, “hunters and jumpers.” “I hated it,” Hunter wrote in his memoir, “Tab Hunter Confidential.” “I consoled myself by considering that I might have been named Tab Jumper.” Hunter would go on to be one of the biggest stars of the 1950s, starring in films like “Grease 2” and “Damn Yankees,” one of the best baseball movies of all time.

When Vin Diesel took the stage at the Golden Globes in 2025, he said, “I’ve had the great privilege of working with critically-acclaimed directors like Steven Spielberg, like Ang Lee, and the late Sidney Lumet, to name a few, fulfilling a dream of a young New York City kid who wanted to be an actor. But I’ve also been blessed to be a part of something else called the blockbuster.”

Diesel’s very name says “blockbuster,” especially for a guy known for starring in the most car-centric blockbusters around in the “Fast and Furious” franchise. This isn’t a case of nominative determinism, however, as Diesel was actually born Mark Vincent. On “The Ellen Show” in 2005, he explained, “I was a bouncer for nine years, and the name stuck. We all had fictitious names just in case we got in trouble.” Vin came from Vincent, and Diesel was a nickname that referred to his impressive physique. “In New York, when you’re kind of built up a little bit,” he said, flexing, “they’d say, ‘That guy’s Diesel.'”

Aaron Paul has been in the business since the 1990s. He kickstarted his career in Hollywood with bit parts on shows like “Beverly Hills, 90210” and “Melrose Place,” popped in on “Veronica Mars” and “E.R.,” and can even be seen as a character credited as “Wasted Guy” in the Ryan Reynolds college comedy “National Lampoon’s Van Wilder.” It wasn’t until 2008 that Paul became a household name, thanks in large part to his role as Jesse Pinkman on “Breaking Bad.”

Many fans likely learned that Aaron Paul wasn’t his legal name in 2022, when he decided to correct that. He was born Aaron Paul Sturtevant, and he decided to drop the surname because he found that casting directors struggled with pronouncing it. Having settled into his career decades on, Paul made “Aaron Paul” his full legal name at the same time his family switched things around, too. His wife filed to make her name Lauren Paul, and they also changed their son’s name from Casper Emerson to Ryden Caspian. Got that, everyone?