MEXICO CITY - The conquest started on the coasts, then crept in from the border. Now Hollywood has come to central Mexico, and the country is star-struck.

In the past two years, the quaint towns and sprawling cities of Mexico's central plateau have been abuzz with filmmaking, from Once Upon a Time in Mexico to Frida, from Man on Fire to The Mask of Zorro 2. 

Rising costs in the United States have drawn Hollywood to Mexico, and the booming telenovela industry in the capital has created a large pool of cinematographers, set builders and production workers.

State governments eager for free tourism advertising are attending Hollywood trade fairs and mailing out guides on working in Mexico.

"We're all over LA, all over Mexico, trying to get people down here, and it's working," said Sarah Hoch, director of the film commission for Guanajuato state, 110 miles northwest of Mexico City.

This week, Salma Hayek began filming the caper movie Bandidas with Penelope Cruz at Churubusco Studios in Mexico City. The same studio will be transformed into the White House in January for Fire Bay, a film about the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

The producers of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, a Brad Pitt-Angelina Jolie spy movie, plan to shoot scenes in Guanajuato, Mexican film officials say. Tom Mix and Pancho Villa, tentatively starring Johnny Depp, is coming to San Luis Potosí, 180 miles northwest of the Mexican capital. The Matador, in which Pierce Brosnan plays an assassin, wrapped up in Mexico City in May. 

Next up: Interior Decorators, starring Robin Williams, said Sergio Molina, president of Mexico's National Film Commission.

For film producers, Mexico's main attraction is the low cost of labor. Wages for Mexican film crews are about one-fourth that of their U.S. counterparts, said Hugo Alonso Reyes Mejilla, secretary for technicians in the Union of Cinema Production Workers. 

He said the union is considering raising its membership limit because of the recent demand for workers. 

"The producers have discovered that the quality of people available here is world-class," Molina said. "We have all the equipment and the skills they need."

The stream of stars has Mexican media in heaven as they document the actors' every move. The television gossip shows twittered happily after Brosnan celebrated his 51st birthday with a shot of Mexican tequila.

On Monday, the Reforma newspaper detailed Hayek's lunch with a friend almost minute by minute: "At 14:25 they finished their main courses and ordered the dessert. . . . As they chatted, (Hayek) smoked about six cigarettes, one after another . . . at 15:24 they asked for the check." 

Hollywood has been dabbling in Mexico for decades, with 1964's The Night of the Iguana and 1979's 10 helping to make the coastal cities Puerto Vallarta, Acapulco and Manzanillo into tourist destinations. The deserts of northern Mexico also used to be a favorite setting for Westerns until the decline of the cowboy movie in the 1970s.

But the big-budget, summer blockbusters didn't start coming to Mexico until the mid-1990s, when Titanic was filmed at a huge, custom-built studio in Rosarito, Baja California Norte. The film injected $85 million into the local economy, the Mexican government says. 

The studio, now called Fox Studios Baja, has since produced Master and Commander, Pearl Harbor and other special-effects spectacles. This summer's sand-and-sandals movie, Troy, was also filmed on the Baja Peninsula.

Hollywood moved into central Mexico with 1998's The Mask of Zorro, filmed mostly in Mexico City and the states of Hidalgo and Tlaxcala. The movie brought $40 million to Mexico, between production costs and free tourism advertising, the government says.

Since then, Zorro star Antonio Banderas of Spain has practically become a local. In the past two years, he has filmed Once Upon a Time in Mexico; And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself, a film for HBO; and the upcoming sequel to The Mask of Zorro within a few hundred miles of Mexico City.