While watching the second Wimpy Kid movie, I was surprised to find out that Greg’s love interest Holly Hills is played by a child actor named Peyton List. The actor who plays Jane Siegel on “Mad Men” is also named Peyton List. Indeed the two have separate Imdb and Wikipedia pages (one born in 1986 and the other in 1998). I thought that the Actors Guild prohibited two active actors from having identical professional names – It’s why Michael Keaton, Michael J. Fox, and Jason Alexander don’t use their birth names professionally.
If you look at the film credits, it says the younger of the two is listed as Peyton Roi List, so I assume that would satisfy the requirement for distinction between them. I don’t think IMDB usually lists middle names for people, so that’s probably why they have the same name in their search.
I think the rules are that they have to be registered with SAG or whatever with unique names. But that doesn’t mean that the person doing the credits gets it exactly right as they often contain spelling errors–so the onscreen credits don’t necessarily match what their “union name.” The early roles appear to be mostly uncredited, so she might not have been a member of SAG yet. And even then, sometimes the onscreen credits are not what ends up on IMDB (trust me).
So, yeah, it is unusual for two actors with concurrent careers (and somewhat unusual names) to be credited the same, but it happens.
While it’s true that Michael Keaton (born Michael Douglas) changed his name to avoid confusion with the actor Michael Douglas and the talk show host Mike Douglas and that Michael J. Fox (born Michael Andrew Fox) made Michael J. Fox his stage name to avoid confusion with another actor named Michael Fox, even though his middle name doesn’t start with J, it doesn’t appear that Jason Alexander (born Jay Scott Greenspan) changed his name for that reason. He started using that name when he was in high school. He probably changed his name for a rather old-fashioned reason - the name “Greenspan” sounded too Jewish. Another example, incidentally, is that the actress Elizabeth Banks changed her name from Elizabeth Mitchell (her birth name) to avoid confusion with the actress Elizabeth Mitchell.
Imdb uses whatever name the actor is currently using professionally. David Hyde Pierce and Neil Patrick Harris are listed as such (and I believe they use their middle names for the same reason – the SAG already had a David Pierce and a Neil Harris)
Maybe that’s what’s required, but I’ve seen enough errors to know that’s not reliable. And IMDB is not connected to the unions for the most part. The only thing I can think of off-hand is the WGA-supplied credits. When they submit the list of writers, that’s pretty much the end of the matter.
Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. It uses whatever name has been submitted. It has no connection to their SAG, AFTRA, PGA, or whatever registry. (But see WGA exception above.)
I’ll just add that the “elder” Peyton List (she’s 26) is really hot. I know her mainly from the short-lived series FlashForward, but she’s been in other high-profile things as well.