Steve Buscemi revealed that everyone — including himself — has been mispronouncing his name for years.
“Growing up, we said Bue-semi, which I can’t even do that anymore. Now I say Boo-semi,” he explained on Wednesday’s episode of the “Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.”
“I don’t know how to say my own name.”
The “Boardwalk Empire” star then confessed that the “Italian way to say it” is “Boo-shemi” but he “didn’t grow up that way.”
During the interview, the “Big Lebowski” star also recalled his early stand-up comedy days, when he tried to shorten his last name to “Buce.”
“You can imagine the fun the emcees had with that,” Buscemi joked.
Similarly, legendary actor Denzel Washington recently revealed that everyone has been pronouncing his first name wrong thanks to his mom.
Instead of “Den-zel,” Washington noted that his name was meant to be said as “DEN-zuhl,” putting the pronunciation force in the first syllable.
“My father’s Denzel Hayes Washington Sr. I’m Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. My mother [Lennis Washington] would say ‘Denzel,’ and we’d both show up,” he explained during his “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” appearance on Tuesday.
“So she said, ‘From now on, you’re Denzel,’” the “Equalizer” actor recalled, using the pronunciation he is known for. “That’s how we got Denzel.”
Kirsten Dunst also struggles with people saying her name wrong, so much so that the actress has given up on correcting them.
“Everyone messes up my name,” the actress pointed out to Town & Country last month. The “Bring It On” star clarified that the correct pronunciation is “Keer-sten.”
“I don’t care,” Dunst continued, noting that she’ll “answer to Kristen [or] Kirsten, which is how you say my name.”
“In England, they don’t really say my name right,” she added. “On the last set, everyone was saying my name wrong, but there were Swedish people, people from Hungary. You just give up.”