Beverly Heather D’Angelo was born in 1951 in Columbus, Ohio. Her parents were Priscilla and Eugene Constantino “Gene” D’Angelo, a bass player and television station manager at WBNS-TV in Columbus.
D’Angelo worked as an illustrator at Hanna-Barbera Studios and as a singer before pursuing acting. While living for a period in Canada, she was a backup singer for American-born rockabilly singer Rompin’ Ronnie Hawkins’ band The Hawks. After going out on their own they became The Band.
D’Angelo began acting in the theatre, appearing on Broadway in 1976 in Rockabye Hamlet, a musical based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet. She made her television debut in the first three episodes of the TV mini-series Captains and the Kings in 1976.
After gaining a minor role in Annie Hall in 1977, D’Angelo appeared in a string of hit movies in the late 1970s including Every Which Way But Loose, Hair, and Coal Miner’s Daughter, which earned her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Patsy Cline.
Her biggest break came in 1983 starring with Chevy Chase in National Lampoon’s Vacation in the role of Ellen Griswold. She reprised this role in four Vacation sequels and a short film between 1985 and 2015. In the 1980s she starred in many other major comedy films; in the mid-1990s she acted primarily in independent movies. In 1994 D’Angelo returned to the stage and won a Theatre World Award for her performance in the Off-Broadway play Simpatico.
She received an Emmy Award nomination for her performance as Stella Kowalski in the 1984 TV movie version of A Streetcar Named Desire. From 2005–11 D’Angelo appeared in the HBO series Entourage playing the role of agent Barbara “Babs” Miller.