Michael Keaton wants to use his birth name professionally

Michael Keaton wants to incorporate his birth name Michael Douglas into his professional stage name.

The Beetlejuice star had to pick a new stage name when he joined the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) in the 1970s because Michael Douglas was already taken by the famous Wall Street actor and the union already had a Mike Douglas, a talk show host.

The Birdman actor revealed to People that he would like to blend his birth name and stage name and be credited as Michael Keaton Douglas. He had planned to begin using the new hybrid name on his directorial outing Knox Goes Away, which he released earlier this year, but he "forgot" to sort it out in time.

"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," he stated.

However, the actor is still credited as Michael Keaton in his latest movie, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which opens in cinemas on Friday.

During the interview, the 73-year-old addressed the story that he picked his stage surname out of a phone book.

"I was looking through - I can't remember if it was a phone book," he recalled. "I must've gone, 'I don't know, let me think of something here.' And I went, 'Oh, that sounds reasonable.'"

Keaton isn't the only actor who wants to use their birth name. Emma Stone has previously expressed her desire to be known by her real name Emily Stone.