Beverly was born on July 17, 1953, the youngest of four sisters, and grew up in Westbrook, Maine. From early on, she loved acting, produced shows with her school friends, and starred in school plays. At the University of Maine, she majored in theater, and she continued her studies at Southern Methodist University, one of the best acting programs in the country, where she earned an MFA and was chosen in a national competition to audition for the League of Resident Theatres. For three seasons, Beverly acted at the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia, where she starred in Vanities, The Mousetrap, The Misalliance, Private Lives, and many other plays. After moving to New York in 1978, she worked in various showcases and regional theater productions and studied with the renowned acting coach Larry Moss. Her work in that class was, in her view, the pinnacle of her career in that she was able to most fully explore character, scene, and text. She liked to say that if the character carried a purse but never opened it, the actress still needed to know everything inside.

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