David Leslie Edward Hemmings was born on November 18, 1941 in Guildford, Surrey, England. He attended college in Epsom, and from the age of nine began to perform as a professional singer. The owner of the highest voice register - soprano, David in his childhood collaborated with the famous British composer Benjamin Britten, who especially for his voice wrote the role of Miles in the opera "Turn the screw". For three years, Hemmings toured, performing works by Britten, but soon his voice began to
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David Leslie Edward Hemmings was born on November 18, 1941 in Guildford, Surrey, England. He attended college in Epsom, and from the age of nine began to perform as a professional singer. The owner of the highest voice register - soprano, David in his childhood collaborated with the famous British composer Benjamin Britten, who especially for his voice wrote the role of Miles in the opera "Turn the screw". For three years, Hemmings toured, performing works by Britten, but soon his voice began to break, and he chose to engage in painting, enrolling in art school. After some time, the young artist achieved some success - already at the age of fifteen, he had a personal exhibition in London. David also came to the movies quite early - when he was thirteen, he first appeared on the screen in a cameo role in the film "Colorful Jacket" (1954, dir. Basil Durden).
In the first half of the sixties, starring in such films as "Burning Life" (1964, dir. Lance Comfort) and "System" (1966, directed by Michael Winner), Hemmings created a portrait of his contemporary, a rebellious young man. This image was further developed in Michelangelo Antonioni's picture "Photomagnification" (1966), in which David played a saturated life of a fashionable London photographer who became an unwitting witness to a mysterious murder. The film made the young actor a star of the world screen, and for a while Hemmings became an integral figure of British pop culture of the sixties, the personification of the “swinging London” of those years. In 1967, David released the album Happens on MGM, recorded with the participation of musicians of the famous American band The Byrds Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman. The triumph of "Photomagnification" was followed by a number of notable roles, including Mordred in the musical "Camelot" (1967, dir. Joshua Logan), the courageous Captain Nolan in the historical-military drama "Attack of the Light Brigade" (1968, dir. Tony Richardson), Dildano in the parody fantasy film "Barbarella" (1968, dir. Roger Vadim) and King Alfred in the historical film "Alfred the Great" (1969, dir. Clive Donner, he founded an independent film company from the British government). In the late sixties, Hemmings left the UK and lived and worked in Australia and New Zealand for several years. David soon began working as a director and producer. He made his directorial debut in 1972 with Running Without Looking Back, a dark drama about a suicidal student. Other directorial works by Hemmings include the drama 14 (1973, the Silver Bear Prize at the Berlin Film Festival), Just a Gigolo (1979) with David Bowie and Kim Novak, the film adaptation of James Herbert’s fantasy novel The Survivor (1981) and the adventure Yankee Zephyr (1981). At the same time, he did not leave the profession of an actor, starring in such films as "Fragment of Fear" (1970, Richard Sarafian), "Juggernaut" (1974, Richard Lester), "Bloody-Red" (1975, dir. Dario Argento), "Blackmail" (1977, directed by Michael Epted) and "The Prince and the Beggar" (1977, directed by Richard Fleischer) Hemmings as a director of a very many episodes, "She worked with the American detective", "Kushkanim", "Kushka" and "Species with others. In some of these series, he appeared in different roles, but nevertheless, in the eighties, the general audience almost forgot him. He recalled himself again, playing the rich industrialist Uncle Henry in the Ken Russell drama Rainbow (1989), but his real return to the screens took place in the new millennium, when he starred in Ridley Scott’s historical epic Gladiator (2000) as the steward of the Roman Colosseum Cassius. His appearance was a surprise to the audience - a heavy gentleman with a puffy face did not resemble a slender blonde, as many remembered him for "Photomagnification" and other films of the sixties. He subsequently appeared in small roles in several films, including Gangs of New York (2002, directed by Martin Scorsese) and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003, directed by Stephen Norrington). The best acting work of the last years of Hemmings’ life was the former boxer Leni, who goes along with his old comrades to fulfill the will of a late friend in the psychological drama Last Orders (2001, Fred Skepsy). His partners in this film were famous British actors Michael Kane, Bob Hoskins, Tom Courtney and Helen Miren. The film also starred his son from his third marriage to American actress Gail Hannicat, Nolan. As a gifted artist, Hemmings still did not give up painting, enthusiastically participating in exhibitions where his work was shown. At the end of 2003, Hemmings was in Romania, where he filmed the mystical thriller Cursed (2003, directed by Simon Fellowes), in which he played the owner of a clinic engaged in occult experiments. This picture was the last in the biography of the actor - on December 3, 2003 he died of a heart attack.
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