Your Professional Acting Name

Let’s talk a moment about your name.

If you’re new to acting then the chances are that you won’t have thought much about this. Perhaps you just assumed that you are going to use your real name.

However, this isn’t always a good idea and this article will tell you why.

Why change your name?

There are some very good reasons for changing your name but it all boils down to making it easy for  industry professionals to find you and remember you.

Common names

First off, go now to Google and do a search for your real name.

Chances are that if your name is fairly common – John Smith, Mary Jones – you will get 100 million hits for all sorts of people.

In other words, your name is already known online. This means it’s going to be harder for people to find you when you want to be found! Someone will search for you and you won’t appear in Google till page 435…

Now, more importantly, go to IMDb and do a search for your full name. If you have a common name then you could find half a dozen or more others with the same name. This is even worse as it means in the industry bible you would be lost amongst others.

As an example, suppose your name is Mary Smith. On Google this brings up hundreds of thousands of hits. On IMDb there are already over 47 actors named Mary Smith (they’re listed as Mary Smith I, Mary Smith II, Mary Smith III, etc and the last time we updated this page a couple of years ago there were only 34 of them!).

So our advice is that if you have a common name, change it.

Uncommon names

But the opposite also applies and another good reason to change your name is if it’s very unusual and difficult to pronounce or spell or remember.

Do people spell your name wrongly? Do they often mispronounce it? Does your Starbucks coffee arrive with something strange and weird scribbled on it?

If so, maybe you should think about changing your name… but with one caveat! Sometimes a simple but unusual name will help people remember you and if you introduce yourself as Joe Whitenose or Jennifer Stairway it will be difficult for people to forget you!

Your name doesn’t represent you

Another reason actors change their name is because it simply doesn’t represent them.

Perhaps you are ethnically Greek and look Mediterranean, but your name is Kurt Schneider so everyone assumes you’re German. Well in that case you might want to change it to something more Greek.

And let’s not forget John Wayne, the rough, tough, cowboy known as The Duke. He was born Marion Mitchell Morrison which doesn’t really sound like someone who will start a fight in a bar so he changed it when he started acting.

So maybe for that reason you want a name which sounds like it belongs to a person and a character like you.

Your name is not original

And of course if you happen to share a name with someone already famous then you should very much think about changing it.

If your real name is Marion Cotillard or Daniel Craig then you need to think of something new!

Choosing a new name

So think carefully about your name and decide if you want to change it to something more original. Not silly or difficult, but memorable and different.

Perhaps this means changing it completely, or maybe just putting an initial in the middle or maybe changing the spelling a little.

As an example, suppose you change your name from Mary Smith to Marey J Smith. On Google this brings up a handful of results and so far there are no actors called Marey J Smith on IMDB.

Which means it’s a LOT easier for someone to find Marey J Smith than Mary Smith!

Then when you have a name, check it out on Google and IMDB and see what comes up. And then try it out for size… and then adopt it.

Find a name that works for you

Of course only you can decide what you want to be called and what you want your new “stagename” to be. But now is the time to think about it and once you’ve decided on a new name, start using that name whenever you apply for work, for your actor website, for your actor enCAST profile, your CV, and so on.

But choose wisely… you might end up with this name for the rest of your life!

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