Stage name other person with the same name. For example, the actor/writer/director Albert Brooks was born Albert Einstein and changed his surname so his name would not be a distraction which would evoke the renowned physicist with the same name. Singer Katy Perry, born Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson, released her self-titled album under the name Katy Hudson, but later used her mother's maiden name to avoid confusion with actress Kate Hudson. Singer-songwriter John Weldon Cale adopted JJ Cale to avoid confusion with John Cale of the Velvet Underground. Singer David Bowie, was born David Robert Jones, and changed his surname to avoid confusion
David Bowie brief appearance as an extra. In 1976 he earned acclaim for his first major film role, portraying Thomas Jerome Newton, an alien from a dying planet, in "The Man Who Fell to Earth", directed by Nicolas Roeg. "Just a Gigolo" (1979), an Anglo-German co-production directed by David Hemmings, saw Bowie in the lead role as Prussian officer Paul von Przygodski, who, returning from World War I, is discovered by a Baroness (Marlene Dietrich) and put into her Gigolo Stable. Bowie played Joseph Merrick in the Broadway theatre production "The Elephant Man", which he undertook wearing no stage make-up, and which