Kat Dennings chose stage name at nine years old
Kat Dennings was "ahead of her time" because she knew her real name "wasn't going to work" for her acting career when she was just nine years old.
Kat Dennings knew her real name "wasn't going to work" for her acting career when she was just nine years old.
The 38-year-old actress - who made her official onscreen debut in a 2000 episode of 'Sex in the City' having previously featured in commercials - was born Katherine Litwack but quickly chose a stage name for herself as she felt her real surname couldn't "be displayed" on promotional posters.
Speaking on the 'Not Gonna Lie With Kylie Kelce' podcast, Kat said: "I chose it when I was nine. Because my real last name is Litwack. That's all you need to hear.
"And at nine, I was like, 'This isn't going to work for me. This is not going to work. I can't see that name. She, slash I, was very ahead of her time.
"I was like, 'This can't be displayed on a poster. It shan't happen.'"
To choose her stage name, the '2 Broke Girls' star took inspiration from Janine Denni, the wife of her mom's best friend, late 'Black Cauldron' author Lloyd Alexander.
She explained: "I went there every week until I was 15 years old. They were like my grandparents.
"I thought it would be a super sick idea if I took her name and made it like, kind of different. So Dennings is from her."
And Kat opted to shorten her first name in honour of her favourite movie at the time.
She said: "Kat, I chose, because Christina Ricci's character Kat in the movie 'Casper' was my favourite character at the time. So I was like, 'OK, Kat Dennings, this is it. I can really picture it."
The 'Thor: Love and Thunder' actress previously branded her real name "a little hideous".
She told Philadelphia magazine in 2008: "I didn’t want to use my family name because I thought, A, it was a little hideous, and B, I wanted to know when someone really knew me or they didn't.
"I was a precocious youngster."
Kat recently told how she was branded "fat" and not "pretty enough" by "cruel" casting directors when she was auditioning for parts as a child.
She told People magazine: "The time that I was auditioning and starting to act, it was a very different environment than it is now.
"There was not a lot of inclusivity at all. It was very harsh. There was a lot of extremely negative feedback and people would not hold back."
Kat went on to say the casting directors she dealt with were "very cruel" when "talking about a child".
She added: "It was pretty crazy thinking about it.
"I'm like: 'How can anyone say that about a little kid? This is insane'. For example, I was 12. I'd go into an audition and I'd do it, and my manager would call me and I'd be like: 'How'd it go?' And they'd be like: 'Well, they thought you weren't pretty enough and you're fat'."
