It was the day Scarlett Johansson swapped Avengers Tower for Auchmithie.
Johansson wore a dark wig and fake-fur coat and filmed several scenes when the village provided the backdrop for Under The Skin, which was released 10 years ago.
Brad Pitt might have joined her in Angus had the cards fallen differently.
Auchmithie’s fame was already well-established as the place where the Arbroath Smokie originated and it was not the first time the village had attracted film crews.
Christie Johnstone was the first of the big post-war productions and filming took place in Auchmithie in late April and early May in 1921.
The Broadwest Film Company took over the White Hart Hotel in Arbroath and employed a significant number of local villagers.
The original novel of 1853 by English writer Charles Reade was set in the fishing village of Newhaven, near Edinburgh, but Auchmithie was chosen as a substitute.
The eponymous Christie Johnstone was played by American actress Gertrude McCoy.
Always keen for a local angle, McCoy told the Courier reporter visiting Auchmithie that although this was her first visit to Scotland, her father was “Scotch-American”.
The silent movie star appeared in 131 films altogether, including 1923’s Always Tell Your Wife, which was directed by the man cinema would soon know simply as Hitch.
Ironically, Avengers actress Johansson appeared in the 2012 Hitchcock biopic alongside Sir Anthony Hopkins after filming Under The Skin in October 2011 in Auchmithie.
Brad Pitt was too costly for the budget
Jonathan Glazer’s film was based on Michel Faber’s novel of the same name.
The film took nearly 10 years to be made, and one of the early drafts of the scripts included a Scottish farmer and his wife who were revealed to be aliens in disguise.
Brad Pitt was, at the time, signed to play the husband.
The movie couldn’t find enough money to make it a reality.
Glazer latched on to a new concept, featuring just Johansson as the alien, who is sent to Earth by a rich corporation to pick up unwary hitchhikers and harvest their organs.
The Lost in Translation star brought a crew of 70 to Auchmithie for five days of filming.
A single-lane track that leads from the village to the beach and harbour was renovated and given a new surface in preparation for the shooting.
The production team had been keen to keep a lid on the rural location for as long as possible with locals asked not to give away any details before the filming started.
They did.
Despite one of the world’s most famous celebrities filming the movie, there were no crowds or fans to be seen and preparations were described by staff as being low key.
Johansson’s appearance caused quite the stir once word broke.
She had already filmed scenes for Under The Skin in the Buchanan Galleries shopping centre in Glasgow and a petrol station in North Lanarkshire before travelling to Angus.
Johansson performed in bitterly cold weather on Auchmithie beach.
Between takes she would rush to a nearby white van for much-needed warmth.
Under The Skin was shot in Scotland for eight weeks and other locations included a forest in Argyll, a club in Livingston, an old East Lothian castle, several Glasgow streets and outside Celtic Park.
The movie was shot using “directorial subterfuge” as Johansson drove around Glasgow in a van filled with hidden cameras.
She persuaded strangers to get into her vehicle before eventually explaining to some of them that they had unknowingly joined a film.
The role was a change of pace for the actor, whose other releases around the same time included The Avengers and We Bought A Zoo.
Under The Skin divided opinion from the start
Premiering on August 29 2013, at Telluride Film Festival, a screening at Venice Film Festival followed in early September, where the movie received mixed reactions.
Variety said the film was “undeniably ambitious but ultimately torpid and silly”.
Scott Feinberg, from the Hollywood Reporter, noted that several people walked out of the screening and described the film as “beautiful” but “plotless and pretentious”.
John Horn, in the LA Times, said the film “isn’t easy to watch”, although Gregory Ellwood, from respected industry website Hitfix, called the film “a near-masterpiece”.
It was released in March 2014 in the UK and the movie trailer included a clip of Johansson walking by crashing waves on the beach at Auchmithie.
In an interview with The Guardian to mark the release of the low-budget sci-fi movie, she spoke about what attracted her to take the role of the femme fatale alien.
“I heard Jonathan was making a film and originally it was a very different story.
“But I met him, and it was very clear that he was struggling to figure out what he was doing with it, and what had attracted him to it.
“It wasn’t his passion project but there was something in the idea of having a character that was an alien that could give him the freedom to be completely observant without any judgment.
“I think we were both interested in that.
“I thought it would be incredibly challenging to play a character that’s free of judgment, that has no relationship to any emotion I could relate to.”
Final scene at Dundee Sheriff Court
Movie critic Mark Kermode was full of praise for the “eerie tale of a space traveller inhabiting human form, prowling the streets of Glasgow in search of raw flesh”.
He said: “Yet this is neither a misunderstood masterpiece nor a wanton misstep – rather it is a striking attempt to tell an exotic story in a down-to-earth environment that deserves praise for its singularity of vision, even as it runs the risk of ridicule.
“Glazer has joked that in an ideal world he’d make films that would only ever be viewed by a handful of close friends, and it’s to his credit that Under The Skin doesn’t make compromises to court a wider audience.
“On the contrary, it is the work of someone who is aiming for the heavens, but is unafraid to fall to Earth.”
Despite being a box office failure, Under The Skin was voted best of the year in a British Film Institute poll, ahead of The Wolf of Wall Street and The Grand Budapest Hotel.
There was a dramatic final scene in 2017 played out at Dundee Sheriff Court.
Billy Macaskill, of Adamson Court, Lochee, who was an extra in Under The Skin, was sent to prison for injecting an “unknown substance” into a man’s leg in the street.
After he was jailed for three months, solicitor Larry Flynn told the court that Macaskill had led “a difficult life, but also a very colourful life”.
One of his better moments, Mr Flynn said, “was when he was an extra in a film with Scarlett Johansson, which was filmed in this area. Not many people can say that”.
It was the final act from a movie that’s now regarded as a cult classic in the sci-fi pantheon.