17 Celebrities Who Were Forced To “Hide” Their Ethnicity To Make It In Hollywood
Kirk Douglas said that he believed his birth name, Issur Danielovitch, was “too unwieldy and too Semitic” for Hollywood.
Recently, Reddit user Chewie83 posed the very interesting question, “Who was/is forced to hide their ethnicity to make it in Hollywood?” And the folks over at r/moviecritic had some very eye-opening responses. Here’s what they said:
1. Rita Hayworth — Born: Margarita Carmen Cansino. Hayworth was convinced by executives in Hollywood to change her birth name and undergo a year’s worth of painful electrolysis to “reshape” her low, dark hairline.
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2. Martin Sheen — Born: Ramón Gerard Antonio Estévez. When he was starting out as an actor in the 1950s, there was significant discrimination in Hollywood (and in New York, where he was living) against actors with Hispanic names. He found it difficult to get auditions and roles because of his birth name. So, he adopted the stage name “Martin Sheen,” combining: “Martin” from a CBS producer, Robert Dale Martin, who had encouraged him early in his career, and “Sheen” from Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, the auxiliary bishop of New York at the time.
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Today, Sheen says he regrets changing his name. However, he explained that he never legally changed his name. “Ramon Estévez” is still on his birth certificate, marriage license, passport, and driver’s license.
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3. Raquel Welch — Born: Jo Raquel Tejada. Allegedly, Welch was instructed to change her “hair, look, name,” by Hollywood studio executives early on in her career with some even suggesting “Debbie” as an alternative to Raquel. Welch was the surname of her first husband, James Welch.
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In the CW documentary I Am Raquel Welch, when asked if she thought she could have reached the same level of success at the time with her birth name, Welch said, “If I was Raquel Tejado, not a chance in hell, no. No way.”
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4. Ben Kingsley — Born: Krishna Pandit Bhanji. In a 2016 interview, Kingsley said that when he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1967, “a very senior director” there told him that with his birth name, he “would always play servants, and never play kings and leading men, politicians, leaders of their country.” As a result, Kingsley combined the nicknames of his father (Ben) and his spice trader grandfather (King Clove).
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5. Kirk Douglas — Born: Issur Danielovitch. Kirk told People in 2015 that he believed his birth name was “too unwieldy and too Semitic” for Hollywood. He made the decision to change it when he was starting his acting career in the 1940s. He later regretted the decision, saying he wished he had kept his original name.
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6. Anthony Quinn — Born: Manuel Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca. While Anthony was never “forced” to hide his ethnicity, he believed his career (and personal life) suffered because of Hollywood’s attitude towards it.
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Speaking with the LA Times in 1995, he said, “At that time Hollywood — hell, America — looked down on anybody not blonde or blue-eyed as potential enemies. We all had to put up with it. I always said I was Mexican, Indian, and Irish.”
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7. Natalie Wood — Born Natalie Zacharenko. After moving to Los Angeles with her family in 1945, actor and director Irving Pichel suggested that Natalie change her surname to something more “Americanized.” RKO executives David Lewis and William Goetz then changed her name to Wood, after director Sam Wood.
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8. Tony Curtis — Born: Bernard Schwartz. In 2009, Tony said in an interview that when he was younger he ‘despised’ the name Schwartz and its German origins and that he would change his name when he would go out. He explained, “I had a relative on my mother’s side whose name was Kurtz, so I took that name and Anglicized it. And ‘Tony’ came from ‘Anthony Adverse,’ the first novel I read.”
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9. Chloe Bennet — Born: Chloé Wang. In 2017, when questioned on social media about changing her last name, Chloe responded by saying, “Changing my last name doesn’t change the fact that my BLOOD is half Chinese, that I lived in China, speak Mandarin or that I was culturally raised both American and Chinese. It means I had to pay my rent, and Hollywood is racist and wouldn’t cast me with a last name that made them uncomfortable.”
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And Chloe had spoken out about changing her name before. In 2016, she told The Daily Beast. “The first audition I went on after I changed my name, I got booked. So that’s a pretty clear little snippet of how Hollywood works.”
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10. Boris Karloff — Born: William Henry Pratt. Boris attempted to obscure his Anglo-Indian heritage, particularly early on in his career. He would often claim to be of Slavic ancestry despite having no such roots and would avoid discussing his family’s background.
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After making the film Targets, director Peter Bogdanovich made a controversial comment in regards to Boris’s skin color, saying he “had a hard time photographing its star, Boris Karloff, because he was dark — too dark.”
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11. Winona Ryder — Born: Winona Laura Horowitz. Although Winona reportedly changed her last name on a whim while being asked how she wanted to be credited for her early films, she has spoken before about her experiences with anti-Semitism in Hollywood.
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In an interview with the Times of London, Winona said that Mel Gibson once said to her at a party, “You’re not an oven dodger, are you?” Later in the interview, she recounted being told by a studio head (who was also Jewish) that she “looked too Jewish,” for the part.
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12. Doris Day — Born Doris Mary Anne Kappelhoff. Early in her career, Doris had singing sessions on a local radio station where the bandleader Barney Rapp heard her. Rapp suggested she take inspiration from the song she sang, “Day by Day,” and change her name. Apparently, he said “Kappelhoff” was “too long to display” on marquees.
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13. Helen Mirren — Born: Ilyena Lydia Mironov. It was Helen’s father, Vasiliy, who changed their family name from Mironov to Mirren when she was young. However, once Helen started a career in acting, she was the one who opted to change from Ilyena to Helen.
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14. Gene Simmons — Born: Chaim Witz. In an interview on Howie Mandel Does Stuff, Gene explained that he purposefully “downplayed” his Jewish heritage at the beginning of his career. He said, “I was born Chaim Witz, and I understood that that didn’t work — I did. I realized for myself that in order to succeed, I’ve gotta be a chameleon of sorts. Basically, dress British, think Yiddish. Yeah, you’re Jewish. That’s fine. Shut the f–k up. Nobody’s interested.”
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15. Danny Thomas — Born: Amos Muzyad Yaqoob Kairouz. Danny had been struggling to “make it” early on in his show business career. However, after a talent agent, Leo Salkin, booked him at a nightclub in Chicago, the rising star changed his name to be more “stage-friendly.”
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16. Casey Kasem — Born: Kemal Amin “Casey” Kasem. Although he initially went be Kemal Kasem early in his broadcasting career in Detroit, the radio start later changed his name to Casey at the suggestion of friends and some professional associates in the radio industry. Speaking at a high school in 1997, when asked why he changed his name, he said, “It didn’t sound like a deejay; it wasn’t hip. So we decided I’d be ‘Casey at the Mike’ — and I have been since.'”
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17. Finally, Alexander Siddig — Born: Siddig El Tahir El Fadil El Siddig Abdurrahman Mohammed Ahmed Abdel Karim El Mahdi. The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine star said at a fan event that he changed his professional name from Siddig El Fadil to Alexander Siddig primarily because he felt that, “El Fadil” was difficult for people to pronounce.
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