| Beverly D'Angelo | |
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| Birth name | Beverly D'Angelo |
| Born | November 15 1951 Columbus, Ohio |
| Spouse(s) | Lorenzo Salviati, (1981-1995) (divorced) |
Beverly D'Angelo (born November 15, 1951) is an American singer and actress, perhaps best known for her role as Ellen Griswold in the National Lampoon's Vacation movie series.
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Biography
Early life
D'Angelo was born in Columbus, Ohio, the daughter of Pricilla (née Smith), a violinist, and Gene D'Angelo, a bass player and television station manager.[1] She is of part Italian descent.[2] Her maternal grandfather, Howard Dwight Smith, was the architect who designed iconic Ohio Stadium, also known as "the Horseshoe" at The Ohio State University.
Career
D'Angelo 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, D'Angelo had a string of hit movies in the late 1970s, appearing in Every Which Way But Loose, Hair, and Coal Miner's Daughter (she portrayed the singer Patsy Cline, and did all her own singing). 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 is set to return as the same character in an episode in the nineteenth season. In 2006, she starred in the independent cult classic Gamers: The Movie. She can now be seen on the hit HBO series Entourage, playing the role of the alpha-female Barbara "Babs" Miller.
Personal life
After the end of her romance with film director Miloš Forman, in 1981, D'Angelo married Lorenzo Salviati, an economics student who also was an Italian duke;[3] half-Polish, he is a descendant of Lorenzo de Medici. Separated in 1983, D'Angelo 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 1997, D'Angelo became involved with Al Pacino. They are the parents of twins Olivia and Anton, who were born in 2001. The couple broke up soon after the children's birth, and they currently share custody.
