The movie Nightcrawler officially opens tonight and San Diego movie goers will see a familiar face. 

KUSI anchor Lisa Remillard didn't know if she would be left on the cutting room floor, but she ended up making the movie's final cut.  

“I thought for sure they would cut my scene,” Remillard laughs. “Even though they were so nice, I had no hope that they were going to keep me in the movie.”

Remillard is just one of the many news reporters cast to play themselves in Nightcrawler, the fictional story of a dangerous drifter, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, who becomes an overnight sensation as a blood-thirsty TV news cameraman.

Remillard started as weekend anchor of KUSI’s Good Morning, San Diego in March 2014. She was working in Vegas before landing the job in San Diego and took a year off to look after her ailing father, who succumbed to cancer last month. “I spent a lot of time at home with him — which was great — and auditioned to play reporter roles in various movies and TV shows, because obviously I am not an actress.”

When the Nightcrawler audition came up, she was originally chosen to play one of the anchors in the studio. “When it came down to it,” she says, “they needed another actress for that role.” She had the look they were going for, “and that’s how it happened. I auditioned and got it!”

Her bit was filmed in November 2013. “When I walked on set, [writer-director Tony Gilroy] came right over to me,” Remillard recalls. “He not only knew my first and last name, he knew how to say it properly — which rarely anybody does. He had seen my work and expressed his trust by asking me to tell him how the scene should look. He even let me write my own dialogue.”

H/T San Diego Reader