Woman named 'Barbie Oppenheimer' says she's had trouble checking into hotels

A woman whose real name is Barbie Oppenheimer has revealed just how the two films being released this summer have affected her life.

Barbara Oppenheimer has had a rollercoaster couple of months since Barbenheimer took over cinemas across the world and the two biggest films of the year were released at the same time.

The woman, whose husband's father is actually third cousins with the real J. Robert Oppenheimer, has been loving all the attention for her very on-point name - even if it's had the downside of making checking into hotels that much harder.

She revealed in a new interview with Slate that she found it "funny" how much attention it brought but was glad that people were going back to cinemas again.

She revealed: "I had college friends around the world texting me that weekend when [the movies] came out, with the whole schmear, you know… 'the bomb and the bombshell'.

"It’s pretty funny! It was a brilliant thing that they launched them together. It really brought people back into movie theaters."

Barbara went to the cinema to watch Oppenheimer on its opening weekend to see "how they treated his story", and made sure to check out the Barbie movie two weeks later - but says she can't choose which one she liked more.

She's even bought herself a Barbenheimer T-shirt and will be going to see both movies again.

Barbara's first connection to Barbie happened when she was just six years old and she received a Barbie doll for her birthday, and also had Ken, Skipper, and Midge in her collection.

While her novel name hasn't been an issue in years past, this summer Barbara ended up coming up against an obstacle when she tried to make a booking but the person thought she was using a fake name.

She explained: "I’m on vacation right now, and when I checked in at the hotel, I said, 'Barbie Oppenheimer!' The guy said, 'Are you pulling my leg?'"

The grandmother-of-five from Newton, Massachusetts, revealed that she did go by 'Barbie' when she was little, before starting to spell it as 'Barby' when she was 12, before eventually being known as 'Barb'.

She added: "I grew up in Milwaukee, it was the Midwest - of course, I was Barb. But then when I graduated and got my fellowship at Mass General, I went by Barbara. I was so professional and serious."

While both movies did well at the box office, Barbie ended up the clear winner, grossing $1.344 billion worldwide compared to Oppenheimer's $788.3 million worldwide, marking a "record-breaking" opening weekend at the box office for any film that was not a sequel, remake, or superhero movie.

The Greta Gerwig-directed flik also became the first movie by a solo female director to gross over $1 billion and was the fastest Warner Bros. film to reach the milestone, beating 2011's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

---