ONE of the most famous marriages to take place in Chippenham Register Office was that of movie actor David Hemmings and his wife Lucy.

The couple, who had set up home in an old mill in Calne in 1998, did not allow any Hollywood razmataz at the ceremony and were witnessed by just a few close friends and family members.

They decided on the date in 1999 as they had been offered a trip to Australia while David appeared in the film The Night We Called It A Day and it gave them the opportunity for an expenses paid honeymoon.

Lucy became his fourth wife and was determined she would be his last.

She set about this by deciding to always be at his side and to always accompany him during filming.

This meant that she was there when he died while filming three years ago.

He was happier and more content than at any other time in his hectic 62-year life. Hemmings had stormed to fame in 1966 when, aged just 25, he was cast as the lead in Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up and by the end of the 1960s was one of the biggest movie stars in the world.

But by the time he met Lucy in the 1990s his star was on the wane and when she met him at a dinner party she was not too much in his thrall.

She said: "We got on wonderfully from the start. He was wonderful company and made me laugh. I realised straightaway that he could be the man for me," she said.

Unfortunately at this stage Hemmings was still married to third wife Prue back in America and they had four children.

But later when the paperwork was sorted and they had found a home in Wiltshire they decided the time was right to tight the knot.

She said: "You can be too cautious. Sometime you just have to jump in at the deep end.

A year after moving into The Mill in Calne, David's career had taken a sudden move back into the stratosphere of Hollywood. He was asked to play the part of Cassius in Gladiator and Lucy went with him to Malta where the Colosseum shots were being filmed. Once again Lucy was forever present. "I was known as the handmaiden," she said. "I was always there handing over iced water and making sure I had the ash tray David always insisted on when he was smoking. In a lot of the shots I would by lying on the ground or hidden behind pots so I could not be seen."