Christie Brinkley reveals how Beverly D’Angelo saved her from going topless in National Lampoon’s Vacation

Christie Brinkley, was already a celebrated model before debuting as ‘Girl in the Ferrari’ in the 1983 film National Lampoon’s Vacation. She was cast opposite American actor and comedian, Chevy Chase for the black comedy road film directed by Harold Ramis.

Recently Christie Brinkley shared her appreciation and thanks to Beverly D’Angelo for saving her from going topless in Vacation. Beverly Heather D’Angelo is an American actress who played the character Ellen Griswold for the National Lampoon’s Vacation franchise.

Christie Brinkley penned in her memoir, “Uptown Girl,” that the producers of the film had asked her to go topless for a scene, a request she had refused. In the excerpt obtained by Fox News Digital, she shares her most memorable part, during the movie shoot. She said,

“The most memorable part of filming was the scene where I bump into Chevy’s character at a motel pool and talk him into going skinny-dipping, which we shot at two in the morning.”

She further added,

“That’s when the production team asked me to go topless for the shot, but I wasn’t comfortable with it: I knew very well by then that part of my appeal as a model was that men had to imagine what was underneath my swimsuit, and I wasn’t about to give that away for what I thought would be a small, goofy movie. (None of us at the time ever suspected ‘National Lampoon’s Vacation’would take off the way it did).”

Christie Brinkley opens up about n*dity request on set and how Beverly D’Angelo saved the day

Christie Brinkley, now aged 71, recalled that the production team had asked her a second time if she would be open to the possibility of n*dity, Brinkley also added that she understood their point of view and couldn’t blame them for trying their luck. However, it was at this point that Beverly D’Angelo stepped up to save the situation.

“Beverly walked out onto set in the nick of time. ‘I’ll do it,’ she said. ‘I’ll be the one to go topless! You’ll get your t—ies.’ I couldn’t have loved her more [at] that moment. And in my opinion, the scene between Chevy and me is funnier and cleverer because I throw my bra and panties at him from off camera, and all that the viewers can see are his oversized facial expressions.”

The actress expressed her gratitude for Beverly D'Angelo, who was friendly on the sets and made her feel welcome. She added,

“I was in this motel in the middle of nowhere, and then I got a call from Beverly right away saying, ‘Hey! Welcome. We’re all going to head out and grab a bite to eat. Why don’t you come with us?’ That’s the kind of thing that just puts you at ease and lets you feel like, ‘I can relax. I’ve got a friend.’”

Christie Brinkley also shared about her memories working with Chevy Chase. She explained that Chase would lighten the mood during shoots, as he would ask for her beauty secrets in his own hilarious style, often asking about how to make his hair look thicker. She also mentioned that they formed a "playful chemistry" which was easy to portray on scene.

Within the memoir, Christie Brinkley stressed that she had always refused to pose without clothes, highlighting that she never participated in n*de photography. She stated,

“To be clear… if anyone asked me to pose n*de, which they eventually did, I said no. To this day, I have never done a n*de shoot — not because I’m a prude, but because I’ve always wanted to be a mom, and I never wanted my kids to be embarrassed by n*de photos of their mother circulating somewhere in the magazine world. Plus, I think it’s much sexier to suggest than to show it all.”

Christie Brinkley later shares that in her modeling career, she has refused multiple things that didn’t seem right to her. She then states a few examples, saying that a few months into her career, a client had asked her to fly to the South of France to accompany a group of men on a yacht in the Mediterranean.

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Christie Brinkley was told the job was to be nice to everyone on the yacht, as everyone on board could have been beneficial to her career. Christie further continued,

“I may have been a naïve kid from Malibu, but nothing about the trip sounded right to me, where, after all, was the modeling part? I heard rumors that other models with more successful careers at the time had taken the same trip and come back with fancy cars, jewelry, and a new magazine cover, but none of that mattered to me. If I was going to get ahead in the industry, I wanted to do it on my own terms, not underneath someone else’s.”

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