He changed his name from Mladen Sekulovich to Karl Malden at age 22, something director Elia Kazan urged him to do. He anglicized his first name by swapping its letters "l" and "a" and used it as his last and taking his grandfather's first name as his own. This was because the first theatre company he was in wanted him to shorten his name for its marquee. He thought that they wanted to fire him and were using his name as an excuse; although that was not the case, he still changed his name to give them no excuse.