Beverly Heather D'Angelo

Beverly D'Angelo's life has been intriguing, inspirational, and always intriguing for the past the past four decades. Maybe deserving of better films than the ones she had to be in, she nevertheless was always an object of fascination and the one to watch...whatever the role. Not exactly a shrinking violet, Hollywood counted on her for her vibrant appearance, affable manner and ability to steal scenes. Beverly Heather D'Angelo is the daughter of Eugene Constantino "Gene", an artist and bass player, who also served as the director of a television station. Her birthplace was in Columbus, Ohio on November 15th 1951. Howard Dwight Smith was her maternal grandfather and the designer of the Ohio ("Horseshoe") Stadium. Her mother was an English, Irish and Scottish-born mother. Her father was Italian. Beverly was a student at an American school in Florence, Italy. Beverly was initially attracted to art and worked as animator/cartoonist at Hanna-Barbera Productions. She then moved to Canada to pursue a career in rock singing. To pay the bills she performed wherever she could including topless bars and coffeehouses. Ronnie Hawkins invited Beverly to join his band in one point. Beverly's acting career began when she left the Hawkins band and was a part of the Charlottetown Festival repertory company. She was touring Canada in the role of Ophelia in "Kronborg 1582" the rock musical version of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" when the world-renowned Colleen Dewhurst stumbled across a show and noticed the potential in Beverly and the show. Then the musical director Gower Champion got into the mix and the show was completely revamped, becoming the rock musical "Rockabye Hamlet", which went to Broadway in 1976. While the show was brief and a few years later, Beverly's Ophelia was a hit and she soon found herself in the West coast with film and TV roles. The show never made it back to the stage following her departure, but she was the main character in Ed Harris' 1995 off-Broadway production Sam Shepard’s “Simpatico” which was a winner of an Theatre World Award. She was part of the TV miniseries Captains and the Kings (1976) as well as later playing a small role in The Sentinel (1977), and Annie Hall (1977), both Woody Allen classics. First Love (1977), Clint Eastwood's co-starring film Every Which Way but Loose (78), and the film version of the cult counter-culture hit Hair (1979) included a number of the co-starring roles she played. Most memorable for Beverly was her explosive role as the singular Patsy Cline in the acclaimed biopic Coal Miner's Daughter (1980). Both she as well as Oscar winner Sissy Spacek (as the country singer Loretta Lynn) effortlessly sung their own singing.