WATERFORD – It’s about 30 minutes into the film when Victoria Haynes first flashes across the screen, a business-like young woman in a dark suit pulling a cameraman to the side.

She’s in the background, and she disappears as quickly as she arrives, but it’s enough for Haynes. The 19-year-old Waterford native – a drama student entering her junior year at New York University – is thrilled to be in a movie at all. Let alone “The Manchurian Candidate.”

Haynes, as it turns out, appears in the film three times. She was cast as an extra shortly after meeting director Jonathan Demme while she worked at Bridgton Books before starting college.

“It’s really exciting, and it was amazing to get to see Meryl Streep and Liev Schreiber and Denzel Washington work,” Haynes said Monday, seated at the kitchen table in her parents’ home on Sweden Road. “I actually got to talk to Meryl when we were between sets one day.”

Streep, she said, “is very kind and very funny.” And, she added with a laugh, “very commanding.”

Haynes spent 13 days on the set and appears in the movie in three scenes. She first shows up in a scene at an arboretum in Washington, then appears as a blurred figure in the background during a speech.

Finally, the camera zooms in to capture Haynes nodding enthusiastically as she congratulates an actor-politician during the climax of the film. The scene is about two hours in, and there is no mistaking the young actress.

Haynes has been interested in theater since her junior year of high school, when she acted in a production of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” She had never really envisioned herself on film, but she did not protest when introduced to Demme by the owner of Bridgton Books. Demme, Haynes said, has a home in the area.

When she got a call from one of his casting directors last year, it was an opportunity she couldn’t pass up. She accepted a small role as an extra, and immediately set out to watch the original 1962 version of the film.

Haynes has since become a mini-celebrity at home. Anyone who knows her family knows about her appearances, she said, smiling.

Still, Haynes hesitates when asked whether she’s Hollywood-bound after school.

“Well, it’s easy to perceive of yourself as sort of a purist,” she said, referring to her respect for theater. But it’s rare for students graduating from acting school to have work in either theater or film, Haynes said, and she has no illusions about making it big anytime soon.

“At least for a while, you definitely have to have one or two other jobs,” she said. That means 40 hours of work each week and rehearsals and performances at night.

With two more years of school, however, Haynes has time to work things out.

She also has had time to enjoy her first film with friends and family while home from New York.

Her father, Bill Haynes, said he couldn’t be more proud.

“We’ve seen it twice so far, and we’re waiting for it to come out on DVD,” he said, barely containing a grin, “so we can pause it when she appears.”