Who Is Beverly D'Angelo's Ex-Husband and 'Soulmate' Lorenzo Salviati? All About the Italian Duke

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Beverly D'Angelo is opening up about her whirlwind romance and marriage to Italian duke Lorenzo Salviati.

"I love Beverly because she sees life with the eyes of a child but lives it with the heart of a woman," Salviati, then 24, told PEOPLE of the National Lampoon's Vacation star in Nov. 1981, shortly after the pair secretly married over Labor Day weekend that year in Las Vegas.

"It didn't occur to us to tell anyone," D'Angelo said of their nuptials at the time. "It was something we did for ourselves."

The couple's wedding actually started as a cruise off the coast of Los Angeles on a chartered yacht for the holiday weekend, but things went sideways when D'Angelo said they accidentally filled the gas tank with water.

RELATED: Beverly D'Angelo 'Loved' Being Married to Italian Duke Lorenzo Salviati: Inside Their Romance

"Then there was a storm, and we got marooned between Catalina and Marina del Rey. It was a nightmare." By the time they were rescued, however, the conversation somehow had turned to marriage, and the couple flew to a chapel in Las Vegas.

So, who is Lorenzo Salviati, with whom D'Angelo amicably ended their marriage as she fell in love with Al Pacino in the 1990s? Keep reading for everything to know about D'Angelo's ex husband and their relationship.

He was a student at USC when he and D'Angelo first met

D'Angelo recalled to PEOPLE in a recent interview that Salviati's cousin, princess Claudia Ruspoli, first tried to give her Salviati's phone number at a party in Saint Tropez, France. In 1981, PEOPLE described the duke as a University of Southern California business student.

"She told me, 'My cousin Lorenzo is in Los Angeles at USC as an economics student, you should find him.' I lost the phone number. I didn't look him up," D'Angelo told PEOPLE in a recent interview.

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But back in L.A., she ended up at a party "and this gorgeous man walked in," recalled D'Angelo. It was Salviati.

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"It was a birthday party everybody had crashed. And Lorenzo came into this room—he had a suite at the Roosevelt Hotel—and he said, 'Okay, too many crashers here. I'm celebrating my birthday in the living room. Beverly, you come in here.' "

"And I looked at Lorenzo and I went, 'I'm not going,' " she recalled, though he did win her affection in the end.

He appeared alongside D'Angelo in National Lampoon's Vacation

While D'Angelo is best known for her performance as Ellen Griswold opposite Chevy Chase in 1983's National Lampoon's Vacation, Salviati also made an appearance in the movie for his one and only onscreen role.

Salviati is listed as a bar piano player in an uncredited role for the film, according to his IMDB page.

D'Angelo recalled to PEOPLE recently that Salviati urged her to take the part as Ellen, though she was initially "so sure that I wasn't the right person."

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"He read it and he said, 'But Beverly look at this. This is very funny," D'Angelo said, adding that Salviati was a particular fan of Randy Quaid's boorish and uncouth character Cousin Eddie: "He said, 'He's hilarious!"

D'Angelo did not care about Salviati's royal title — and they had an understanding during their marriage

Though D'Angelo became a noble by marriage when she tied the knot with Salviati, she was not interested in titles.

"I certainly was not somebody who went around saying, 'I'm a duchess.' It was irrelevant to me," D'Angelo told PEOPLE, adding that she considers Salviati her "soulmate" then and now.

In 1992, The New York Times reported that D'Angelo and Salviati lived on his 7,000 acre estate near Pisa, Italy, for most of their marriage, which lasted just five years.

"When I was married to Larry, I kept thinking, 'This is a bad marriage, but it would make a terrific mini-series,' " D'Angelo told the outlet at the time.

D'Angelo and Salviati held an understanding during their marriage, she told PEOPLE recently: they would each go off and have their own fun, "but if there were any crises or anything, we'd come back together."

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"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,'" she said.

Salviati, according to D'Angelo, protested at first when D'Angelo came to him and said that she had fallen in love with someone else.

"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!'"

"It was a great love match," D'Angelo told PEOPLE recently of her relationship with Salviati.