Oh, toss in any that amuse you.
I find it amusing that someone named Lily played someone named Rose.
Well, ol’ Dirk Benedict (a) is living proof that stage names will never vanish so long as you have a real name like Niewoehner; but what amuses is that he (b) apparently got that particular name because, hey, who doesn’t love Eggs Benedict?
My five-great-grandparents, Matej and Katerina Poskocil, came to Baltimore from Bohemia in 1826. They chose to Anglicize their first names to Matthew and Katharine, but the family remained Poskocil until my grandfather decided to change it for reasons of his own. I still have second and third cousins with that name.
It sounds like even more of a joke, but Peter Jeremy William Huggins decided the makers of his suit (Brett & Co.) made a fine stage name.
Hey, how about James George Janos acting under the stage name of Jesse Ventura?
He also did other things under the stage name of Jesse Ventura.
Yeah, he’d run for president but he ain’t got time to tweet.
Come to think of it, various pro wrestlers arguably qualify on their own, but then go on to make it conclusive by getting billed in the credits of movies under their stage names, right? Hulk Hogan is still, legally, Terry Bollea; and Randy Savage wasn’t really “Randy Savage”, and Roddy Piper wasn’t really “Roddy Piper”, and so on.
Apart from Andy, although that’s the sort of association that would make other people change their names.
Back on track: Susan Alexandra Weaver decided at age 14 to adopt the first name of a character from The Great Gatsby, “Sigourney Howard” and kept it ever since. Her father, television executive Sylvester, went by “Pat”, while her famous uncle Winstead Sheffield Glenndenning Dixon Weaver went by the more easily-remembered “Doodles”.
On PSYCH, Shawn Spencer – a character so blandly white that his parents were played by Cybill Shepherd and Corbin Bernsen – was played by James Roday.
“James Roday” is the stage name of James David Rodriguez.
You know, that off-hand remark of mine about professional wrestlers getting credited in movies under their ring named reminds me that Richard Potash (a) performs magic under the stage name “Ricky Jay”, and also (b) gets credited as “Ricky Jay” in a fairly impressive number of film roles.
(Likewise, IMDB has magicians from Max Maven to David Copperfield getting screen credits under their stage names instead of as Goldstein and Kotkin – and I’m not talking about a filmed performance “as himself”, I mean bona fide acting roles.)
After a couple of inquiries, I hope the PTB won’t mind if I post a link to my (newly updated) book on people who have changed their first names. After 17 years, a number of them paid, I can claim this one wooden nickel, right?
I love it.
And, to keep from stepping on your metaphorical toes while also not just using a post to metaphorically sing your praises, let me keep the thread going by mentioning an actress who doesn’t seem to fit your just-dropping-stuff criteria: ‘Kat Dennings’, aka Katherine Victoria Litwack.
Natalie Portman would be another. Her name is actually Neta-Lee Hershlag; her stage name was apparently an attempt to maintain some privacy. I don’t think “Portman” relates to any personal connection, but was just picked to be generic-sounding.
ETA: I see she was referenced earlier in the thread, but her name was not correctly reported, so it didn’t show up in a search.
Calls to mind Juan Moreno y Herrera-Jiménez, who acts under the name Jean Reno.
Whoopi Goldberg was legally Caryn Johnson until quite recently, and may still be.
Katy Perry gets listed as, well, “Katy Perry” when she’s acting in movies or on television shows – but as I understand it, she was born with the last name “Hudson”, and she’s never legally changed it; her first album was even titled Katy Hudson back when she was doing gospel music, and she simply (a) made a clean break with a new persona, and (b) didn’t want to get confused with, y’know, Kate Hudson.
As far as I can tell, “Heather Sweet” is still the legal name of the actress who’s racked up IMDB credits under the stage name of Dita Von Teese.
Kristen Bell is an unusual case. Her legal birth name is Kristen Anne Bell. But as a child she decided she didn’t like the name Kristen so she began using her middle name Annie as her name. So people who know her in real life often still call her Annie.
But when she became an actress she decided not to use Annie Bell or Anne Bell. She went back to her original first name Kristen. So she’s essentially using her real name as a stage name.
Frank Zappa is another example of a celebrity with a name that sounds made up but was his real birth name.
You want an unusual case, how about Clare Woodgate?
She earned acting credits under the name ‘Clare Woodgate’, because of course she did. And then, in her twenties, she got rejected at an audition to play a wide-eyed teen in AN AWFULLY BIG ADVENTURE, and so she dyed her hair and auditioned as a young unknown with no screen credits under the name ‘Georgina Cates’.
She got the part, Hollywood ensued, and she eventually changed her legal name to match her stage name. (She also married actor Skeet Ulrich – and you don’t think he was born with the name ‘Skeet Ulrich’, do you?)