David Hemblen
David Hemblen is an actor, born 1941.
Acting was a second choice for David Hemblen. Born in London and raised in Toronto, he had a masters in English and was working towards a doctorate in medieval studies when a visiting Royal Shakespeare Company director saw him in a university production, and a season at Toronto's Royal Alexandra Theatre followed instead. The stage stayed central for decades: seasons at Stratford and at the Shaw Festival, and Astrov in a Toronto production of Uncle Vanya.
The academic training is audible. Hemblen had one of the great instruments, a low, exact, faintly amused voice that could deliver a threat as though it were a footnote, and directors used it two opposite ways. Animation took the theatrical version: Magneto across the nineties X-Men series, the Vaultkeeper in Tales from the Cryptkeeper, the Supreme Intelligence in Silver Surfer, Lord Dread in Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future. Atom Egoyan drained it instead, casting him as a customs inspector in Exotica and a film censor in The Adjuster, men who process other people's secrets for a living and stopped being surprised long ago.
The bulk of the filmography is the other Canadian industry, the one hosting American productions through the eighties and nineties, where he played doctors, officers and eastern European heavies in Tommy Boy, Short Circuit 2, Brainscan, Fly Away Home and Maximum Risk. Television gave him the long parts, George in La Femme Nikita and Jonathan Doors in Earth: Final Conflict. He died in 2020.
Movies (17)
- Maximum Risk (1996)
- Tommy Boy (1995)
- Short Circuit 2 (1988)
- Exotica (1994)
- Fly Away Home (1996)
- Rollerball (2002)
- Where the Truth Lies (2005)
- M. Butterfly (1993)
- Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future: Bio Dread Strike Mission (1987)
- The Sweet Hereafter (1997)
- Booty Call (1997)
- Brainscan (1994)
- Model by Day (1994)
- The Adjuster (1991)
- Mesmer (1994)
- Hollow Point (1996)
- Salem Witch Trials (2002)
TV (8)
Where to start with David Hemblen
Most people meet him through the X-Men series, and the writing there holds up better than the animation does. His Magneto is patient and reasonable, which is the only way that character is ever frightening.
The pairing that shows the range, though, is Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter: two films where he is asked to be quiet and institutional and does more with a pause than with a line. Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future is the guilty pleasure, an eighties toy tie-in with a genuinely committed pulp villain at its centre. La Femme Nikita is the same authority doled out an episode at a time, and Earth: Final Conflict gave him the biggest television role of his career. If you only want the voice, with none of the picture attached, Tales from the Cryptkeeper.