I don’t know why many have stopped, but I know one that needs to. Imogene Poots. Dear Lord, is that not the most awful name ever to yell the whole world about?
It makes Honeysuckle Weeks look like a nice name.
Imogen is very on-trend so that’s not a bad choice. Poots… Nothing goes with Poots. I wonder why she didn’t drop the Poots and substitute her middle name: Imogen Gay.
Brings to mind Andrew James Clutterbuck – who’s also on-trend, but had the presence of mind to get credited under the stage name of Andrew Lincoln.
Because no one names their child Alphonso D’Abruzzo or Robert Matthew Van Winkle anymore.
Or Stefani Germanotta.
Yes, sorry, I was only referring to her last name. I can just imagine how difficult being in grade school must’ve been for her. Fortunately, she’s enormously talented and beautiful, so I’m sure that helps. But geesh.
And thank you for making me realize I misspelled Imogen. For some reason, I didn’t look it up this time, and no matter which way I went with it (with an e or without), it looked wrong. Sigh.
The one I never got was Bond Girl turned Indiana Jones’ love interest, Alison Doody.
Just pick a stage name already! It’s the gift you give yourself!
(Back on-topic: William Eugene Burrows? Billy Drago.)
Engelbert Humperdinck was born Arnold Dorsey. He wanted a distinctive name. His stage name was also the name of a German composer.
Robbie Coltrane of Yer A Wizard Now Harry fame was born Anthony Robert MacMillan, but chose his stage name in tribute to jazz great John Coltrane before racking up plenty of awards for acting on television and plenty of roles in movies.
I would’ve guessed that “Steve Valentine” was a stage name, but apparently he came by it naturally. And I likewise would’ve guessed that Richard E. Grant was actually Steve Valentine, and I would’ve lost that bet too.
But let me add that Richard Grant Esterhuysen did decide to go by the stage name of “Richard E. Grant”, because, c’mon: Esterhuysen? Only keep that if you’re going to lop off maybe 9/10ths of it and then reshuffle instead of starting with one strike.
In a story that would’ve played out the same back when, Lauren D’Ambruoso decided against an ‘ethnic’ name that ended in a vowel to act as “Lauren Ambrose”; you maybe know her from SIX FEET UNDER, or that X-FILES rebake earlier this year.
But in the times-they-are-a-changin’ department, consider “Alessandra Torresani”, the poster girl for CAPRICA who landed a recurring role on BIG BANG THEORY earlier this year: she decided ‘Toreson’ was crying out for some end-in-a-vowel magic.
Yeah, I said ‘rebake’.
What with one legal matter and another, it’s occasionally noted that Rick Springfield isn’t just the new guy playing Lucifer on SUPERNATURAL after his run just last year on TRUE DETECTIVE when he wasn’t busy doing that RICKI AND THE FLASH movie with Meryl Streep; he’s also still, y’know, Richard Springthorpe.
Hallie Todd has been all over the place on television – she spent an episode as Data’s daughter, she spent years as Lizzie McGuire’s mom, she held down a recurring role on MURDER SHE WROTE and is just as comfortable on DIAGNOSIS: MURDER as she was on MURDER ONE – and only once getting credited as “Hallie Eckstein” instead of as her stage name. (And, no, it’s not that “Todd” is her middle name; she’s not doing the just-drop-a-name thing, Amateur Barbarian has that covered.)
Barbara Lynn Herzstein earned half-a-dozen or so screen credits as Barbara Seagull, but then went back to using her usual stage name of Barbara Hershey.
I remember thinking John Krasinski really sounds like what you would find out an actor’s real name was.
As to the original question… It seems American society is just much more multicultural now, and both used to and more embracing of various backgrounds.
So Sofia Villani Scicolone had to be Sophia Loren 50 years ago to be “acceptable” and marketable, but Sofia Vergara is fine being Sofia Vergara today.
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Fair enough, but – for example – consider Christine Flores, who of late felt like she’d be more marketable as “Christina Milian”; and, when asked How did you get the stage name Milian, she replied that it “worked out better for my career to have the last name Milian, because Flores kept me in a little box … Milian really opened things up for me. It’s weird what a last name will do. I changed it to Milian and next thing you know I was working, and getting auditions and stuff, and it was crazy.”
Plus ça change…
Who coincidentally disappeared in mysterious circumstances last week.
But thankfully turned up safe and sound a day later.
They should’ve called in Poppy Montgomery, from WITHOUT A TRACE! (Note: also a stage name. No, not the “Poppy” part; “Montgomery”. And don’t tell me she didn’t have choices; her legal name is Poppy Petal Emma Elizabeth Deveraux Donahue.)
“Poppy Petal”? Oh that poor child…