Beverly D'Angelo Biography / Pictures

Beverly D'Angelo (born November 15, 1951) is an American singer and actress.

Biography

Beverly was born in Columbus, Ohio, the daughter of Priscilla (née Smith), a violinist, and Gene D'Angelo, a bass player and television station manager. She is of part Italian descent. Her maternal grandfather, Howard Dwight Smith, was the architect who designed Ohio Stadium, also known as "the Horseshoe" at The Ohio State University.

Beverly began work in the theatre, appearing on Broadway in 1976 in Rockabye Hamlet (also known as Kronborg: 1582) a musical based on Shakespeare's Hamlet. Although the production was a failure, running less than a month, D'Angelo's performance as Ophelia attracted positive attention.

After gaining minor roles in movies including Annie Hall, Beverly had a string of hit movies in the late 1970s, appearing in Every Which Way But Loose, Hair and Coal Miner's Daughter. Her biggest break came with Chevy Chase in the 1983 National Lampoon's Vacation. Her role as Ellen Griswold was reprised in three Vacation sequels from 1985 through 1997. In 1992, she had a guest appearance in the third season of The Simpsons as Lurleen Lumpkin, a beautiful, Southern country singer and waitress, in "Colonel Homer", and sixteen years later in 2008, she appeared in the nineteenth season - as the same character - in the episode "Papa Don't Leech".

Beverly D'Angelo has a recurring role on Law & Order: SVU as defense attorney Rebecca Balthus.

In 2006, she starred in the independent cult hit Gamers: The Movie. She can now be seen on the hit HBO series Entourage, playing the role of the alpha-female Barbara "Babs" Miller.

In 2008, Beverly had a role in the film Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay as Sally. She also played the housemother in the film The House Bunny and currently wrapped a Tony Kaye film Black Water Transit and David O Russell film Nailed playing Jessica Biel's mother.

After the end of her romance with film director Miloš Forman, in 1981, Beverly married Lorenzo Salviati, an economics student who also was an Italian duke; half-Polish, he is a descendant of Lorenzo de Medici. Separated in 1983, Beverly and Salviati finally divorced in 1995.

From 1985 until 1991, D'Angelo, although still married to the Duke, lived with Irish director Neil Jordan. During this time she had a small role in his 1988 comedy High Spirits, as well as the operatic film Aria (1987) in which she played Gilda in the Rigoletto scene (music by Verdi). Later she began a relationship with Anton Furst, an Academy award-winning production designer, who committed suicide in 1991 after they broke up.

In 1996, Beverly became involved with Al Pacino. She had previously met him in 1988 when auditioning for the film, "Sea of Love". They dated and lived together from 1996-2003. They are the parents of twins Olivia and Anton, who were born in 2001. The couple broke up two years after the children's birth, and they currently share custody. Chevy Chase states on the National Lampoon's European Vacation DVD commentary that he thinks of himself almost as a godfather to her twins (possibly as a light-hearted homage to Al Pacino).