For Beverly D’Angelo, making Miloš Forman’s 1979 film adaptation of Hair was a career-defining turning point, one she literally had to fight for after having never even seen the stage musical. At the time Hair was casting in 1977, D’Angelo primarily viewed herself as a singer rather than an actress, having only recently transitioned from working as a Hanna-Barbera animator and background vocalist.
Director Miloš Forman banned anyone who had previously appeared in the stage version of Hair from auditioning. D’Angelo didn’t know the show at all, she simply fell in love with Forman’s directing style and realized acting was the only way to work with him. To prove she could carry a leading dramatic and musical role, D’Angelo went through 14 separate auditions before Forman finally cast her as Sheila Franklin.
Screenwriter Michael Weller and Forman completely overhauled Sheila’s character from the Broadway show. Instead of a political NYU student living with the tribe, D’Angelo played a sheltered, wealthy debutante from Short Hills, New Jersey, who gets swept up in the Central Park hippie counterculture. Because of the character rewrite, Sheila’s original Broadway lament (“Easy to Be Hard”) was given to Cheryl Barnes, while D’Angelo was handed the upbeat, joyous “Good Morning Starshine,” which she famously sang while driving a convertible full of the tribe across the country.
Filming took place on location starting in October 1977 across New York City (Central Park, Washington Square Park), California’s Mojave Desert, and Washington, D.C. Working closely with Forman, cinematographer Miroslav Ondříček, and choreographer Twyla Tharp, D’Angelo had to match the raw, improvisational energy of co-stars Treat Williams, John Savage, and Annie Golden, often shooting unscripted-feeling moments on real city streets and in freezing autumn weather during the Central Park sequences.
Hair marked D’Angelo’s first major starring film role and led directly to her next musical breakthrough: playing Patsy Cline in Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980), for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination. She remained close with Forman and her Hair castmates including Treat Williams, with whom she reunited on screen in 1984 for A Streetcar Named Desire and at 40th-anniversary cast retrospectives.































