Beverly D'Angelo's Husband Approved of Her Divorcing Him for Al Pacino: "He's Fantastic"
The Christmas Vacation star was once married to a very understanding Italian duke.
A Hollywood star falling in love with another actor while married to an Italian aristocrat sounds like the makings of a scandalous affair, but that wasn't the case for these three individuals. In the mid-1990s, Beverly D'Angelo and Al Pacino got close while she was married to Lorenzo Salviati, an Italian duke. D'Angelo and Salviati had an untraditional marriage, so it wasn't a surprise to him that his wife was seeing someone else. When he found out that she was going to leave him, it came as a shock… until he realized who she'd be leaving him for. Read on to see what D'Angelo shared about the surprisingly amicable split in a recent interview.
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D'Angelo and Salviati were married 14 years.
D'Angelo married Salviati in 1981 shortly after they met at a party. The two decided to have an open marriage, where they could both see other people but would always be there to support each other. The National Lampoon's Vacation star explained in a Dec. 7 interview with People, "[I]f there were any crises or anything, we'd come back together."
That all changed when she fell for Pacino.
D'Angelo said that her arrangement with Salviati worked out well until she met Pacino.
"I always thought the guys that I was with thought it was great that I was married because they knew 'no responsibility here!' But when I met Al Pacino and told him about my little deal, he said, 'Well, that's crazy,'" D'Angelo recalled.
His comment made her realize that she didn't want to continue her marriage with Salviati. The Hair star explained of telling her husband, "I said, 'I'm in love.' He goes, [D'Angelo affects an Italian accent] 'Oh, Beverly, who is it this time?' And I said, 'Well, it's an actor.' He went, 'An actor? No, no, not an actor.' And I said, 'I really love him and we're talking about having kids and he thinks it's crazy that I'm married and now I'm thinking it is too.'"
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Salviati approved when he found out who the actor was.
Salviati wasn't thrilled at first, but, as D'Angelo tells it, his perspective changed when she told him who she was seeing.
D'Angelo continued, "He went, 'Oh, that's ridiculous. Who thinks this is crazy, this perfect relationship? Who is this actor?' I said, 'Well, it's Al Pacino.' He goes, 'Al Pacino, he's fantastic. I love him. We divorce!'"
She said that they signed the papers and that was that. "That's when my mother-in-law started to love me, I think," D'Angelo shared. "It took her 15 years to understand that I wasn't in [the marriage] for a title of wealth or for privilege."
Today, D'Angelo still believes that she and Salviati were "a great love match."
Pacino and D'Angelo were together for several years and had two kids.
D'Angelo and Pacino were together until 2003, but they never married. They welcomed twins, Anton and Olivia Pacino, together in 2001. "I thought that I loved all of these people," D'Angelo told Columbus Monthly in 2020. "I did not know what love was until I had kids."
The former couple's child support battle made headlines, but they got to a better place to raise their children. "The key thing is creating a new history, and moving on from whatever dissolved that relationship to the new one of co-parenting," D'Angelo told Closer in 2017.
In the interview with People, she said of her ex, "The greatest gift that Al ever gave me was to make me a mother."
