Top 5 Hollywood celebs who switched up their last names!

In Hollywood some celebrities choose to change their last names for various reasons like branding, personal preference or to stand out in the industry. Changing a last name can be a strategic move for actors looking to create a different identity or distance themselves from their past. Some have adopted stage names that become more iconic than their birth names.

Look at the list of Hollywood celebrities who have changed their last names:

Angelina Jolie

Angelina Jolie is a famous actress known for her acting career and her work helping others. When she started out in Hollywood the actress decided to use her middle name Jolie as her last name instead of her dad’s last name, Voight. She did this to distance herself from her dad Jon Voight with whom she was not close.

Nicolas Cage

Nicolas Cage, whose original name was Nicolas Kim Coppola, adopted her stage name Cage early in his career to distance himself from his famous uncle The Godfather and Apocalypse Now director Francis Ford Coppola, to make his own identity in the industry.

Olivia Wilde

Olivia changed her last name from Cockburn to Wilde after playing Gwendolen in her high school’s production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.

The actress is the daughter of Harper’s Magazine editor Andrew Cockburn and investigative journalist Leslie Cockburn.

In 2007, Olivia told The New York Observer that “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” as Olivia explained that she ended up opting for playwriter Oscar Wilde’s name.

Louisa Jacobson

Meryl Streep’s daughter Louisa Gummer goes by her middle name, Jacobson. In order to avoid criticism some actors draw for nepotism, The Gilded Age star also dropped her last name because there already was an actress named Louisa Gummer and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) requires that “no member use a professional name which is the same as or resembles so closely as to tend to be confused with the name of any other member.”

John Legend

John Legend’s real name was John Roger Stephens as his stage name started as a nickname his friends used for him. He said that Legend was not a name he picked himself originally. But over time more people around him started calling him Legend instead of his real name.