12 Actors Who Ditched Their Real Names

2) Sigourney Weaver / Susan Weaver

The name Susan Weaver offers up images of the girl at school who used to eat PVA glue at the back of the classroom…but then turned out to be a total genius.  Sigourney’s inspiration for putting distance between herself and her normal birth name was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and its character, Sigourney Howard.  Weaver’s reasoning was that she was “too tall” to be referred to as Sue or Susie and wanted a name to match her towering stature. Sounds like a load of bunkum to be honest and that what she really wanted was a name that no one knew how to pronounce so as to be permanently the centre of conversation.

1) Bruce Willis / Walter Willis

While not the biggest departure from his actual name, Bruce Willis chose wisely when he dropped Walter. Considering now that his real name bares a striking similarity to Walter White, the meth-flogging antagonist of Breaking Bad, and sounds more like a science teacher than an action star he’s done very well for himself. Imagining a world wherein Die Hard‘s John McClane is embodied by a chap called Walter is a world where ass isn’t kicked, rather, it’s politely spoken to if it doesn’t mind terribly.