His Real Name Wasn’t Gene Wilder
Wilder felt that his birth name, Jerome Silberman, lacked the right ring to it. Even a play on his name, “Jerry,” didn’t make the cut. Instead, he adopted a stage name, a name we all grew to know and love – Gene Wilder. He chose to call himself Gene after Eugene, the lead character of Thomas Wolfe’s first novel, Look Homeward, Angel.
Source: Twitter
Gene rounded up his name with Wilder after Thornton Wilder, a writer he greatly admired and the author of one of his favorite plays, Our Town. He officially became Gene Wilder in 1961, after he was accepted into Lee Strasberg’s esteemed Actor’s Studio in Manhattan.