What is the point of having character names aside from actor's names?

Question

What is the point of having a character name different from the actor who is playing that character?

For example, George Clooney = John McGrady

What is the point?

Why can't it just be: George Clooney = George Clooney in a movie?

Answer 1

Movies are not written for actors.   A writer creates a script and the names within the script.  He may have a reason for using the names that he does.  

If you had George Clooney, George Foreman and George Carlin in the same movie, would you advocate them all using the name George in the movie.   Wouldn't that be confusing?

When choosing a script, actors look for a character that they feel they can sink their teeth into, that will be interesting to play and possibly lead to increased fame and fortune.  Very often, the name is part of that character and it is harder to get into a different persona when that character has the same name you do.   They are trying to be someone else with a different name.

Answer 2

These are just three of many reasons:

1) When referring to a character out of the movie context, how would anyone know exactly what movie you were talking about?

2) Character names often have symbolic meaning that the actors' names alone cannot provide.

3) Actors sometimes play characters that are of a different nationality or time period than their own, so they need to be named accordingly.

Answer 3

The character name was created by the writer.

Peter Parker has always been Spiderman`s name in the comics. Why would we change his name to Tobey Maguire? What would happen if another actor took over the role? Would we then call him Matt Damon?

What about family relationships? In Harry Potter what if Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley) said my name is Rupert Grint and here is my family Julie Walters; Richard Fish; Alex Crockford; Chris Rankin; James and Oliver Phelps; and Bonnie Wright. WTF? Notwithstanding the fact that Rowling already named them Molly; Arthur; Bill; Percy; George and Fred; Ron and Ginny that would be totally bizarre and confusing.

Plus as an actor-- the actor is not him or herself. Jennifer Garner IS Sydney in Alias -- the daughter of spies. NOT a girl from West Virginia with three sisters who is married to Ben Affleck.  

I find this to be an entirely odd question. Movies are not about the people who are the actors. They are the story. What about biopics? Why would Denzel Washington be called Denzel Washington when he was portraying Malcolm X?

Why shouldn`t the actors take on the names of the characters they are playing?

Answer 4

they aren't the same person.

When they do play themselves they often do go be their own names--like John Malkovich in Being John Malkovich or when well known people make cameos as themselves.  This always places the character in relation to our world, rather than just the fictional world of the story and can also date it.  

But mostly, they aren't the same people.  That's why they call it acting.

Answer 5

The answer is not as profound as you may be lead to believe!! First, that's just how it's gotta be as the people who create the scripts/charactors make it so. Also, it allows the actor to say, do, be, and behave as he/she might not otherwise, versus playing him/herself. For example, if Mr. clooney needs to play a g*y person, and he was not g*y, acting the role out at a diff. persona frees him to do so.....