Beverly D’Angelo has always been a hands-on mom when it comes to parenting her 24-year-old twins, Anton and Olivia Pacino, even when parenting came with sacrifices.
D’Angelo, 74, revealed that she first became aware of the popularity of her 1989 holiday film, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, when her kids were 10 years old. The actress told People on Monday, November 24, that Anton and Olivia said everybody was “talking about” the movie at school at the time. However,D’Angelo admitted she shielded them a bit from the Hollywood spotlight when they were younger.
“I did not raise my kids in that culture,” D’Angelo told the outlet of her children, whom she shares with ex-boyfriend Al Pacino. “If I would have been more focused, maybe I would have had a bigger career, but I was focused on my kids, to tell you the truth.”
D’Angelo said she never expected Christmas Vacation to become a cult classic across all generations, including with her kids’ classmates.
“Honestly, I never imagined it, and I don’t care what anybody says, nobody imagined that 40 years down the line or however long it’s been, that the Griswolds would be part of our culture,” the Entourage alum shared of the film, which also stars Chevy Chase, Randy Quaid, Juliette Lewis and Johnny Galecki.
D’Angelo gave birth to Anton and Olivia when she was 49 in 2001 after undergoing IVF. “I had them so late, and it was like, ‘Well, been there, done that, let’s do this,’” she told the outlet of managing her career and motherhood.
D’Angelo candidly opened up about becoming a mom later in life on a handful of occasions over the years. In particular, she noted that Pacino, 85, has never been married, but he knew that starting a family with D’Angelo was what he wanted from the start of their relationship.
“I had a fantasy that when you have kids, you do it in a family setting,” D’Angelo told Closer Weekly in July 2017. “After we’d known each other for three months, [Al] looked me in the eyes and said, ‘I want you to be the mother of my children.’ That’s all I had to hear.”
Beverly D’Angelo Momodu Mansaray/Getty Images
She explained, “I got pregnant at 48, delivered six weeks after I was 49, and by 51, I was looking at a landscape as a single parent.”
D’Angelo and Pacino dated from 1997 to 2003, settling a bitter custody battle in 2004. Despite their past disagreements, they were able to move on as friends for the sake of their kids.
“The key thing is creating a new history, and moving on from whatever dissolved that relationship to the new one of coparenting,” D’Angelo told the outlet.
D’Angelo said “the most important thing” she learned from their split was “how vital acceptance is.”
“We all have a desire to change things that we don’t like, but you can’t change another person,” she said. “You have to accept differences and all the things that led to a breakup in a way that allows you to move forward. And out of my support system and people I know and love, I’ve created the ideal partner.”