Emma Stone, the award-winning actress, recently made a surprising revelation about her name.
She disclosed that she would prefer to be called Emily instead of Emma because Emma is not her real name. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the 35-year-old actress expressed her desire for people to use the name she was born with, stating, “That would be so nice. I would like to be Emily.”
Stone explained that she chose the name Emma because the name Emily was already taken by someone else in her actors’ union.
However, she admitted that a couple of years ago, she had a moment of realization and felt like she needed to go back to using her real first name. Her co-star Nathan Fielder even started calling her Em to make the transition easier for her.
Interestingly, Emma Stone is not the only celebrity who has had to change their name due to someone else in the acting world already using it.
Actor David Tennant changed his name from David McDonald at the age of 16 after finding inspiration from Neil Tennant, the frontman of the Pet Shop Boys. Similarly, Canadian singer The Weeknd dropped the final “e” from his stage name to avoid copyright issues with a Canadian band called The Weekend.
Even US actress and director Elizabeth Banks had to change her name from Elizabeth Mitchell because there was already someone registered with that name in the Screen Actors Guild.
She shared that she made a list of potential names, alphabetized them, and Banks was the first one on the list. And just like that, she decided to take it to avoid any further complications.
