Fans asked, and she answered. In a new video post on Instagram, Beverly D'Angelo opened up about ex Al Pacino, sharing the story of their romantic relationship and giving some insight into how they stayed friends after breaking up. In the caption, the National Lampoon's Vacation star explained that when she asked followers what they wanted to see more of on her account, her inbox "got filled up with questions about [her] relationship" with her former partner.
The two actors were together from 1996 to 2003 and share two children. Now, 20 years after their split, they've been co-parents and friends much longer than they were romantic partners. Read on to find out more about these celebrity exes and their unique relationship.
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They met on a plane.
D'Angelo shares in her Instagram video that she and Pacino first met on a flight, and that it was essentially love at first sight.
"I lived with Al for seven years and we have two children," she says in the clip. "In 1996, we were on the same plane going from Los Angeles to New York. He was seated in front of me. He said, ‘Come up and sit beside me,' and by the time the plane landed, it was on."
She decided to have children with him.
Kathy Hutchins / ShutterstockWhen D'Angelo and Pacino got together, she had already been married to her first husband, Lorenzo Salviati, for 14 years, and she was in her mid-40s. She explains in the video that she wasn't planning to have children, but that she changed her mind when the Godfather star asked her about it.
"In 1997, he looked me in the eye and said, 'I want you to be the mother of my children.’ And although I'd avoided that role my whole life, I was deeply in love and I was 100 percent in," D'Angelo explains. "We did our first round of in-vitro in ’97 and a few years later, with a lot of effort and the miracles of modern science, this happened..."
At that point, the video cuts to a montage of photos of D'Angelo and Pacino together with their children, Anton and Olivia Pacino, twins who were born in 2001. She explains in her caption that she consulted with her kids before sharing the post.
"The greatest gift that Al ever gave me was to make me a mother," D'Angelo toldPeople in 2022.
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There was one snag before they got to that point, however.
Kathy Hutchins / ShutterstockIn 2022, D'Angelo explained that she was still married to Salviati, an Italian duke, when she met Pacino. The couple had an open marriage in which they could date other people while remaining partners. When she met Pacino, D'Angelo realized that the arrangement wasn't right for her anymore.
To People, she recalled how she told her husband that she wanted to move on. "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,'" D'Angelo said.
According to her, Salviati wasn't amenable to ending their marriage until he found out who she had fallen in love with. "He went, 'Oh, that's ridiculous. Who thinks this is crazy, this perfect relationship? Who is this actor?,'" she told the magazine. "I said, 'Well, it's Al Pacino.' He goes, 'Al Pacino, he's fantastic. I love him. We divorce!'"
She and Pacino have a "unique" friendship today.
Fred Duval / ShutterstockIn her video, D'Angelo glosses over her breakup from Pacino, simply saying, "Yikes, it got complicated. Our split was finalized in 2004." Around that time, the pair made headlines for their contentious child support case.
She goes on to explain that they were able to redefine their relationship for the sake of their family.
"The power of our love for our children was the basis for resolving our conflicts and creating a new history as co-parents, leading individual lives separately but always intertwined as a family," the 71-year-old says. "As for me and Al, it is a unique and profound friendship between two artists that endures to this day, through thick and thin. Twenty-seven years now of doing it our way."
In the caption of the post, she shares more about their friendship, noting, "[We] came to share our lives with a deeper kind of intimacy, honesty and acceptance than a 'traditional' relationship would have allowed (for us at least)." She adds that they "always been linked on the creative level" and that their conversation "about acting, the search/need for expression ... started in '96 and continues to this day."
