David Bowie was born David Robert Jones, but he changed his last name to avoid confusion with Davy Jones of The Monkees, who was already becoming famous in the mid-1960s. Bowie chose “Bowie” after the American frontiersman Jim Bowie, known for the Bowie knife.
People often think Bowie had two different colored eyes—but actually, he had a condition called anisocoria, the result of a teenage fight over a girl. One pupil remained permanently dilated, giving the illusion of different eye colors.
The iconic alter ego Ziggy Stardust was a way for Bowie to explore stardom from a distance. The character became a phenomenon, but Bowie found it so consuming he had to “kill off” Ziggy at the height of his popularity in 1973.
Bowie starred in several films, most notably:
- The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)
- Labyrinth (1986), as the Goblin King
- The Hunger (1983)
- He even played Nikola Tesla in The Prestige (2006)
