She plays a blood-sucking vampire with an air of mystery around her when she moves to a small seaside town.

But while her character might not be giving too much away, Gemma Arterton’s costume is more than making up for that.

The actress was snapped bursting out of her costume as she filmed scenes for her new film Byzantium in Hastings, south east England.

Gemma, 25, looked freezing as she filmed scenes on the beach for the movie in the very low cut red dress.

At one point she filmed scenes where she covered her mouth and looked distressed as she ran along the shingle.

She also managed to flash rather a bit of leg too after getting into a spot of bother with her microphone’s battery pack, which had been tied around her upper thigh under her dress and out of sight.

She had to call on a member of the crew to lift her billowing full skirt on the dress and help her adjust the battery.

The film is directed by Neil Jordan, and also stars The Lovely Bones actress Saoirse Ronan and X Men: First Class‘s Caleb Landry Jones.

Arterton and Ronan play two young female vampires who move to a small British town and mystery and intrigue immediately surround the pair who could be sisters or mother and daughter.

In the book, the eldest, Claire, takes a job in a pub while the younger girl Eleanor, goes to school and during a truth exercise in her drama class, she confesses that she is over 200 years old and has survived on human blood.

But her classmates think she is crazy and her teacher contacts the school counsellor but she makes one friend in the form of Frank who has been home schooled and is considered an outsider.

It is Jordan’s second venture into the vampire genre, 17 years after the success of his big screen adaptation of the Anne Rice book, Interview With The Vampire.

His new blood-sucking tale is also an adaptation, but this time of a play called A Vampire Story by Moira Buffini, which was commissioned in 2008 by London’s National Theatre.