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Louise Thomas
Editor
Love them or loathe them, nepo babies are built into the bones of the entertainment industry.
Defined as children of successful celebrities and people of interest who use their power to get jobs and other life perks, some – listed on film credits and lurking at fashion week parties – self declare the lineage that gave them a leg up, while others deny their privilege is related to their success.
“If somebody’s mom or dad is a doctor, and then the kid becomes a doctor, you’re not going to be like, ‘Well, you’re only a doctor because your parent is a doctor.’ It’s like, ‘No, I went to medical school and trained,’” claimed The Idol star – and Johnny Depp’s daughter – Lily-Rose.
Meanwhile, Gwyneth Paltrow – daughter of Meet the Parents actor Blythe Danner and Duets director Bruce Paltrow – reasoned that “as the child of someone, you get access other people don’t have, so the playing field is not level in that way. However, I really do feel that once your foot is in the door…then you almost have to work twice as hard and be twice as good.”
As the nepo baby debate rages on, these are the stars who’ve ditched or altered their notable names over the years...
Lourdes Leon
Madonna and The Big Lebowski actor Carlos Leon’s daughter Lourdes releases dance music under the stage name Lolahol. She told The Cut“I want to feel like I deserve things and not just like I’ve been given things. And, yes, there’s undeniable privilege that I’d be stupid to not realise. Nepotism babies are pretty awful usually, and my mom and my father raised me to be so much smarter than that.”
Enrique Iglesias
Enrique Iglesias initially released music under various different stage names as a teenager, including Enrique Martinez, in order to hide his burgeoning music career from his famous parents: journalist Isabel Preysler and “Feeling” singer Julio Iglesias. However, after he signed a deal with a record label, he released his first album under his real surname.
Emilio Estévez
Actor Martin Sheen’s son Emilio, whose real name is Ramón Estévez, initially wanted to inherit his father’s stage name, like his younger brother and Two and a Half Men star Charlie (Carlos) Sheen. But he changed his mind after his father told him, “Don’t make the mistake that I did. Don’t change your name,” and continued to go by Estévez instead.
Louisa Jacobson and Henry Wolfe
Meryl Streep’s daughter Louisa Gummer uses her middle name Jacobson in a professional capacity because there’s already an actor who works under the moniker Louisa Gummer.
Streep’s musician son Henry Wolfe also goes by his middle name. After performing with a band called Bravo Silva, Wolfe dropped his first solo EP in 2009 and performed his song “Stop the Train” on the soundtrack of his mum’s film Julie & Julia.
Angelina Jolie
Daughter of the Academy Award-winning Coming Home actor Jon Voight, Angelina Jolie was originally named Angelina Voight. Although the Maleficent star appeared in the Las Vegas comedy Lookin’ to Get Out alongside her father while using her real name when she was seven years old, she later switched to using her middle name when she pursued an acting career as an adult and petitioned to drop Voight from her surname legally in 2002.
Shiloh Jolie
Following in her mother’s footsteps, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s daughter, Shiloh, legally requested to drop “Pitt” from her surname after her parents’ acrimonious split on her 18th birthday. The dancer’s request came after it was reported Pitt’s other children, whom he shares with Jolie – Zahara, Maddox, Pax and Knox – also no longer use his surname. However, Shiloh is the first to make the legal change.
Nicolas Cage
Nicolas Cage was born Nicolas Coppola and is the nephew of The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola. When he started his career, he still went by Coppola but ultimately decided to switch to Cage because while he was filming the comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High his co-stars kept making jokes about his famous uncle.
Scott Eastwood
Clint Eastwood’s son Scott was born with the surname Reeves because his mother, Jacelyn, gave him her surname at birth. When he started his acting career, he kept Reeves as his surname because he “wanted to fly under the radar a little and see if [he] could do it and if [he] could get any roles". But, when he only scored a handful of parts – some of which were in films his father directed – he opted to use the Eastwood surname for the rest of his career.
