Stanley Kubrick reportedly wanted him to play the lead role in an epic biography of Napoleon which was planned, but never filmed, in the early 1970s.
1967: Co-founded the HemDale Corporation with John Daly. However, he left the company in 1970.
A professional singer by the age of 9.
An exhibited painter by the age of 15.
As a teen he left home and headed for Austria where he performed magic and played the guitar in nightclubs.
Ex-fiancé of Jane Merrow.
Father of actor Nolan Hemmings
Father of six children - one daughter by his first wife, one son Nolan Hemmings by his second wife, Gayle Hunnicutt, and three sons and one daughter by his third wife.
Father-in-law of Nikki Grosse.
He had just finished filming scenes for the movie, Blessed (2004) (aka Samantha's Child), when he suffered a heart attack and died.
Most people who knew him as the handsome leading man from Blow-Up (1966) didn't recognize him as the stocky character actor from the films he was in later in his career.
Recorded a pop album, in Los Angeles in 1967, titled "David Hemmings Happens", backed by several members of The Byrds and produced by The Byrds' mentor Jim Dickinson. A single was released, "Back Street Mirror", written by the former Byrd Gene Clark (who never recorded it himself).
Started his career as a boy-soprano of some note. Benjamin Britten composed some of his most important child parts for him, i.a. Miles in "The Turn of the Screw". He was renowned for his mature and intelligent vocal interpretations of these parts and many have never been bettered since.
Told movie critic Roger Ebert in a February 1967 interview that he was going to appear in a movie adaption of Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange (1971), with a script by Terry Southern, in 1968. Hemmings did not mention Stanley Kubrick to Ebert. Southern gave Kubrick a copy of "A Clockwork Orange" but the director ignored it as he was working on developing a biography of Napoléon Bonaparte after finishing 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Reportedly, one of the actors Kubrick considered to play the French soldier and emperor was Hemmings.