Beverly Heather D'Angelo

Exciting, fascinating, and never less than intriguing -- are the main adjectives when describing the career of Beverly D'Angelo, which has more than four decades of success. It is possible that she deserves better films than the ones she was typically in, she nevertheless was always the object of curiosity and was a pleasure to watch...whatever the role. A far cry from the shrinking violet, Hollywood counted on her for her lively persona, casual manner of speaking and ability to steal scenes. Beverly Heather D'Angelo was the daughter of Eugene Constantino Gene "Gene" D'Angelo and Priscilla Ruth Smith, a violinist and bass player who also had a TV station. Howard Dwight Smith was her maternal grandfather, and also the designer of the Ohio ("Horseshoe") Stadium. Her mother had English, Irish, Scottish and German roots, while her father was of Italian descent. Beverly went to an American school in Florence. Beverly was at first attracted by art and worked as animator/cartoonist at Hanna-Barbera Productions. She then moved to Canada to pursue a career in rock singing. To earn a living singing, she went wherever she could including topless bars and coffeehouses. She was invited to sing with Ronnie Hawkins, a rockabilly legend. Beverly's acting career began when she quit Hawkins and joined the Charlottetown Festival. While touring Canada as Ophelia, she saw the chance to be in "Kronborg  1582" that is a rock musical rendition of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Colleen dewhurst was there and noticed promise in Beverly. Eventually the musical director Gower Champion joined the equation and the show was transformed, becoming the musical rock "Rockabye Hamlet", which was able to make its way to Broadway in the year 1976. Although the production was short-lived and a few years later, Beverly's Ophelia was well-received and soon she found herself in the West coast with film and television opportunities. After that she was never back on the stage, though she did appear alongside Ed Harris in the 1995 off-Broadway version of Sam Shepard's "Simpatico" which won her a Theatre World Award. An appearance in the TV miniseries Captains and the Kings (1976) led to bit parts in The Sentinel (1977) and in the Woody Allen classic Annie Hall (1977). First Love (1977), Clint Eastwood's film Every Which Way but Loose (78) and the film version of the cult Counterculture Hair (1979) were a few of her co-starring roles. The most memorable thing for Beverly was her explosive featured performance as the one-and-only Patsy Cline in the acclaimed biopic Coal Miner's Daughter (1980). Both she and Oscar award-winning Sissy Spacek (as the country singer Loretta Lynn) proficiently performed their own singing.