Demonstrations of love often have ways of finding their way in the most unexpected ways, even through a divorce. This could well be the summary of the sentimental relationship between Beverly D’Angelo (Ohio, 71 years old) and Al Pacino (New York, 82 years old). The actress, promoting her new film Night Without Peace (2022), now told People magazine how her legal separation with the Italian duke Lorenzo Salviati, with whom she eloped and married in the early eighties, came coupled with the beginning of his relationship with the protagonist of The Godfather (1972). A love story that lasted between 1997 and 2003 and from which two children would be born.

“I called my husband and told him: ‘I’m in love.’ He was like, ‘Oh, Beverly, who is it this time?’ and I told him he was an actor and I really loved him and we were thinking about having kids and he [referring to Al Pacino] thought he was crazy that she was married,” D’Angelo revealed. In the magazine, he also assured that he had reached an agreement with Salviati to maintain an open relationship, in which if at any time they felt that it was over, they would talk and reach an agreement to separate.

Despite having reached that pact, according to D’Angelo’s account, her then-husband continued to protest that anyone might think that their marriage, established as an open relationship, could be crazy. “Who thinks this is crazy, this perfect relationship? Who is this actor?’, my husband would say to me and I replied: ‘Well, it’s Al Pacino.’ To which he told me: ‘Al Pacino, fantastic. I love him. We divorced!”.

The divorce, as the protagonist of Vacations (2015) tells, was friendly between her and the Italian nobleman. “We just signed the papers and that’s when my ex-mother-in-law started to love me, I think. It only took him 15 years to realize that I was not in that marriage for the title of nobility or wealth,” said the actress. D’Angelo still considers Salviati her soul mate to this day: “It was a great love match.”

And that’s how D’Angelo and Al Pacino were able to begin a romantic relationship that lasted six years, between 1997 and 2003, and from which the twins Olivia and Anton James, both 21 years old, were born. “The best gift that Al gave me was to become a mother,” said the actress, who had her children at the age of 49 through artificial insemination. “After we’d known each other for three months, [Al] looked me in the eye and said, ‘I want you to be the mother of my children,’” the actress told Closer Weekly magazine when Olivia and Anton were 16 years old. “That was all she needed to hear,” she added then, in another of the few times she spoke about her love story, which Al Pacino never referred to publicly.

Despite the pride that D’Angelo feels for his children, it was not until now, with the premiere of Silent Night on November 29 in Los Angeles, when Olivia and Anton accompanied her on the carpet for the first time at 71 red. “Of course, they have been to the Oscars and various premieres with their father, but this was the first time it was mom’s turn and we had a fantastic time together,” the actress explained to various media outlets after going through the Red carpet.

For his part, Pacino, who has been accompanied on many occasions by his children to the Oscar galas and premieres of his films, has always been wary of exposing his personal life in the media. However, in 2020, in an interview with EL PAÍS at the age of 80, the actor acknowledged that one of the great dreams pending from him was to have had a great family. “I know it’s hard for a child to grow up without the attention of his parents [his parents divorced him when Al was a baby]. I myself was not a good father to Julia [her eldest daughter of hers, whom she had at 49], and things improved with the twins [Anton and Olivia, who were born at 61]. Do you know what a pleasure is? See how the years go by in the three of them ”, he confessed.

Pacino, who has always kept his love life away from the public spotlight, celebrated his 82nd birthday last April with his girlfriend Noor Alfallah, according to The Daily Mail. The star of Serpico (1973) went out to dinner with some friends and his current partne, the 28-year-old film producer, to a Jones establishment in West Hollywood, in Los Angeles, specializing in pizza and pasta.

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