It's almost a Hollywood rite of passage for celebrities to come up with a stage name to set them apart from their peers.
But it's just as fun to uncover the real names of the biggest celebrities and the reasons why they decided to make the switch.
And after Leonardo DiCaprio revealed he was told to change his name to 'Lenny Williams' early on in his career this week, we thought we'd take a look at those who actually did decide to take the plunge.
Read on to find out the names and histories of our favourite stars.
Reese Witherspoon
You may have forgotten that Reese Witherspoon doesn't go by her given name, Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon.
The actress reminded Nicole Kidman – and us – by revealing that she can't address her friend Laura Dern by their shared name.
Witherspoon, 49, referred to Dern by her last name during a conversation with Kidman, 58, for Vanity Fair.
"I hate how you call her Dern, though!" Kidman interrupted, explaining it sounded "weird".
"You know why? Because my name is Laura, and her name is Laura, and it's confusing to me," Witherspoon explained.
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"Oh! That's right," Kidman replied.
"So I get confused and just call her Dern," Witherspoon said, "We can't both be Laura."
"She doesn't call you Laura, though," Kidman asked, confused.
Witherspoon responded, laughing: "I don't understand your point. I don't like your tone. You're trying to understand something, so it just makes no sense."
Kidman isn't the only one of her costars to be confused, with her Morning Wars co-star and friend of two decades Jennifer Aniston also being shocked by the truth.
After learning Witherspoon's first two names, the 56-year-old let out a baffled, "Who the hell's Laura?"
"I'm Laura Jean," Witherspoon said during a joint interview with LADbible "That's my real name."
Aniston then asked, still confused, "What made you go with Reese for your acting name?"
The Legally Blonde star explained that she never changed her name since it was "always Reese", with the actress taking on her mother Mary Elizabeth "Betty" Witherspoon's maiden name for her stage name.
"It's my middle name," she added. "I'm Laura Jean Reese."
The actress legally changed her first name to Reese when she was younger.
Cher
Cher recalls a curious interlude from her rich and many-chaptered history in her new book Cher: The Memoir, Part One.
The Oscar- and Grammy-winner writes about how, when she went to apply to change her legal name in 1979, she was "shocked" to discover that on her birth certificate, her first name was listed as Cheryl, which did not match what she thought her actual name was.
"I believed Cherilyn was my name until the day years later when I decided to legally change my name to simply Cher," the Moonstruck star pens in her memoir.
She went on to explain how her late mother Georgia Holt – who was 19 years old when she gave birth to Cher in 1946 – was exhausted after labour and did not catch the mixup.
When a nurse came in to her room to ask what the baby's name was, Cher writes, her mother responded that she "had no idea, but the woman insisted so she replied, 'Well, Lana Turner's my favorite actress and her little girl's called Cheryl'. My mother's name is Lynda, so how about Cherilyn?'"
After the alarming discovery, Cher writes that she confronted her mother about it, asking, "Do you even know my real name, Mum?"
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According to the memoir, Holt replied, "I was only a teenager, and I was in a lot of pain. Give me a break."
Cher legally changed her name to her famous mononym back in '79, shortening her first name to Cher and shedding her four surnames: her father's last name Sarkisian, her step-father Gilbert Hartmann LaPiere's last name, and the surnames of both her ex-husbands, Sonny Bono and Gregg Allman.
Martin Sheen
Martin Sheen was convinced he needed to change his name to make it as an actor.
But he's had since revealed he regrets not sticking with his original name.
"Sometimes you get persuaded when you don't have enough insight or even enough courage to stand up for what you believe in, and you pay for it later," he told Closer Weekly.
Though he's Martin Sheen on everything career-related, "it's still Ramon Estévez on my birth certificate," he revealed. "It's on my marriage license, my passport, driver's license."
Sheen's son, the actor Charlie Sheen, also changed his name for work reasons. The Two-And-A-Half Men star was born Carlos Irwin Estévez, choosing Charlie as it was the fun version of the English version of his name.
Martin's other children include actors Emilio Estevez , Ramón Estevez, and Renée Estevez.
Thandie Newton
Many years after establishing a career, the actress revealed that the name she uses if not her own.
She didn't! In an April 2021 British Vogue interview, the actress revealed "the W was carelessly missed out from her first credit".
From now on, she is reverting to the original Shona spelling of her name, after decades of being known and credited as "Thandie Newton".
"That's my name. It's always been my name. I'm taking back what's mine," she told the magazine.
DJ Havana Brown
In a video captioned, "Some things you may not know about me.. 😝", DJ Havana Brown has shared her real name.
Speaking to her TikTok followers, the Aussie DJ reveals her real name is Angelique Meunier.
"It actually is a very common name in France... it's almost like John Smith is in Australia," she says.
She shares that she chose to have a stage name because her real name was 'too sweet' and as a DJ she wanted something that was 'a little bit sexier'.
She then shares the story behind why she chose Havana Brown.
"I was like, cats are independent, they're strong, have boundaries," she says.
"They know what they want and they know how to get it."
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She told viewers she looked up breeds of cats and came across the rare breed Havana Brown.
The DJ shares that the deciding factor was the fact the Havana Brown cat also has brown hair and green eyes.
Portia De Rossi
Born Amanda Lee Rogers, De Rossi changed her name legally when she was 15 and has said that, in retrospect, it had lot to do with her struggle with being gay. She says she was trying to find things she could identify with, which started with changing her name.
"I picked Portia because I was a Shakespeare fan [Portia is the character in The Merchant of Venice]. De Rossi because I was Australian and I thought that an exotic Italian name would somehow suit me more than Amanda Rogers," she said.
"When you live in Australia, Europe is so far away and so fascinating, so stylish and cultured and sophisticated.
Bob Dylan
The famous singer-songwriter Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman but later shortened his first name and added a new surname.
While it was first believed he took his new last name from poet Dylan Thomas, the musician shot down those claims.
"What I was going to do as soon as I left home was just called myself Robert Allen," Dylan wrote in his book Chronicles.
"As far as I was concerned, that was who I was – that's what my parents named me. It sounded like the name of a Scottish king, and I liked it. There was little of my identity that wasn't in it."
He then tested out the name Elston Gunn but said that "was only temporary" and began testing out other surnames to go with Bob and one day Dylan popped out.
He is now legally named Robert Dylan.
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