WASHINGTON (AFP) - Move over Hollywood, butt out Broadway: Washington, once seen as a dour city with too many grim-faced lobbyists and politicos, is attracting hordes of film-makers and stars these days, as well as the people who like to watch them.

In 1991, half a dozen films and TV shows were shot in Washington. Fifteen years later, more than three times that number were shot here and in the first six months of 2009, Washington has been buzzing with movie and TV activity.

Last month, visitors and locals watched the residents in music channel MTV's reality show, The Real World, check into a house in Dupont Circle for weeks of cohabitation and filming for a show that will air next year.

Some DC natives reported on celeb-spotting website JustJared.com, seeing actor Jack Nicholson outside La Tomate restaurant, also in Dupont Circle near Washington's embassy row.

Nicholson, according to JustJared, is in Washington -- referred to by locals as "The District" or DC -- to film Academy Award winning director James Brooks's new movie, in which Nicholson plays Reese Witherspoon's father.

The romantic comedy, which has a working title of "How Do You Know" and also stars Owen Wilson and Paul Judd as two men vying for Witherspoon's affections, recently wrapped up several weeks of filming in Washington.

Earlier this year, Angelina Jolie filmed several takes of a scene for the spy thriller "Salt" outside the Archives-Navy Memorial Metro station in downtown DC.

"The scene played out right in front of anyone who wanted to watch, and the set was so unassuming that some people who were walking by had no idea what they had stumbled onto," Fox Television, which filmed Jolie being filmed, wrote on its website.

Most of the productions that film in Washington are smaller affairs that merely pass through the capital without putting down roots for several weeks.

"But even if they're just passing through, they stay in our hotels, eat in our restaurants, shop here -- and all that generates revenues for the city," said Josh Friedman, spokesman for the DC Office of Motion Picture and Television Development.

Washington is highly prized as a filming location not only because it pays movie-makers incentives -- almost every town or city does, said Friedman -- but also because the capital simply cannot be replicated in a studio.

"We have landmarks you can't do justice to if you try to recreate them. It's too obviously fake," said Mike Montgomery, a card-carrying member of the Screen Actors Guild who works between acting jobs as a guide on tours of DC locations where films have been shot.

"Forrest Gump", "Wedding Crashers", "National Treasure" and even the 1930s classic "Mr Smith Goes to Washington" are just some of the movies that used the Lincoln Memorial as a backdrop, Montgomery told a group of cinema buffs on one of the tours, which On Location Tours launched less than a year ago in Washington.

Peter Sellers's "Being There", "All the President's Men" and "Thank you for Smoking" are among more than 120 movies shot at the Capitol, the most popular Washington film location, Montgomery said.

In the movies the building has been swarmed by locusts -- which were actually styrofoam packing peanuts, painted brown -- and has "been the target of a lot of violence from aliens," said Montgomery.

But although Montgomery can spot a studio set or blooper about Washington in a movie -- like Joan Allen jogging through Arlington cemetery in "The Contender", which, Montgomery said, "nobody does" -- since the September 11, 2001 attacks in which Washington was targeted other cities have been acting as ersatz US capitals for film-makers.

Toronto has been particularly good at mimicking Washington, with more than 20 films, including the TV movies "The Day Reagan was Shot", "Secret Service" and "RFK," about the assassinated brother of slain president John F. Kennedy, filmed in the Canadian city between 2000 and 2006.

But there's no denying that there's a sense of cool about living in or visiting Washington these days, and according to Rebecca Pawlowski, director of communications at Destination DC, much of that is thanks to President Barack Obama.

"There's been a lot of buzz and excitement around Washington DC, starting with the election in November and continuing into the inauguration in January, particularly internationally -- we've seen a lot of visitors coming over for that reason, to be part of this phenomenon," Pawlowski said.

"People want to be part of the energy and changes in Washington."