A homegrown Whitehorse actor opened on the big screen in town and across North America on Friday in the summer blockbuster thriller, The Day After Tomorrow.

Amy Sloan plays one of a handful of characters who decide to maintain refuge inside the New York Public Library while the world undergoes a chilling transformation into a new ice age as the the wrath of global warming takes hold.

Hers is not a starring role, but a distinct character with her share of lines.

Sloan said this morning from her home in Los Angeles that she wasn't sure how much of her part had made it past the editing room floor until yesterday when she and a friend went to a local theatre to see for themselves.

A colleague who was also in the movie had seen a director's version earlier, and assured her she was in the final production. Her parents, Mary and Dave Sloan of Whitehorse, saw the movie when it opened here and had left her a note of congratulations on her answering machine.

Still, she was uncertain of how much of her part had been left in.

Family, Sloan quipped, are happy even if they just see the back of your head.

'I was holding on to my friend who was sitting next to me and you know, kind of squeezing her arm when I knew I was coming up ... getting nervous, happy when I got a laugh from the audience,' said the 26-year-old born and raised in Whitehorse.

'It's different than theatre ... when you go to see something in the movie theatre you kind of can gauge the reaction of the audience, which was really, really fun, and I really enjoyed it. It was the first time I have, sort of, had that experience. So it was neat for me to be in the movie theatre yesterday with people who were gasping and laughing and enjoying themselves.'

And for the most part, most of what she shot was included in the final production.

'It was a pleasant surprise to see myself in there,' she said. 'It is not a huge part by any means but I am definitely in there and I've got some lines.'

No stranger to local theatre, Sloan, whose last local performance was December 2002, in the Guild Hall production Proof, auditioned for the part in the Hollywood thriller two years ago this summer. She was on the set for about six and a half weeks a little more than a year ago filming what has been billed as one of the summer's big releases.

It stars Dennis Quaid, Jake Gylleenhall and Emmy Rossum. Quaid is a climatologist who is warning of impending doom in as little as a decade if the world doesn't do something about climate change. Change comes quicker than expected, and its devastating and frigid grip on Canada and the northern United States have Gylleenhall and his girlfriend, Rossum, holed up in the public library, along with Sloan and others.

While a veteran of local and national theatre, as well as a handful of other film productions, this was Sloan's first peek at the high-end side of Hollywood.

'This is certainly the first big blockbuster movie that I have ever been part of,' she said. 'This is definitely the biggest in sales and in scope in terms of how many people are going to see it.

'It is certainly the most expensive film I have been in, and highest profile thing I have ever done.'

For the proud mother, a local drama teacher and herself no stranger to the Whitehorse stage, what the North American debut would bring Friday was also a bit of an unknown.

Mary Sloan pointed out her daughter was in the movie Gothika, starring Halle Berry, but most of her lines didn't make the edit.

'Oh God, I hope she is in it,' was how Mary was feeling Friday night. 'I hope she did not get cut out.

'But it was so exciting. She is definitely a character, she has sort of a life.'

It was gratifying, said Sloan, adding she also sees her daughter is maturing in the profession.

'You can see she has gotten rid of her mannerisms,' said Mary of all those little individual characteristics everybody displays when they're nervous.

'It is gone, and she is giving the director a clean slate to work with, and that is good.'

Amy chuckled when asked how much money she made.

When you're working in the film industry, the money is good, said Sloan, but she balances it with the times she's not working, the time she's waiting for the phone to ring and the fruitless auditions.

'I was really lucky to get it,' she said. ' You know, to get over a month of work at any time of the year as an actor is a lucky thing. It is a very tough profession to make a living in.

'I am excited,' she added. 'I am excited for people to get the chance to see it. It's neat that it is opening all over the place, I think that is really cool.'

Most of the picture was shot in Montreal.