Toronto is a Hollywood star. Although the city rarely gets a chance to play itself, often standing in for New York City, Chicago, or other American cities, movie makers seem to love setting up fake subway entrances and lining the curb with yellow taxis. The TTC even has the tools to make the disused Bay Lower station look like the New York subway. Right now, more than 30 productions are filming in Toronto, according the city's film department. In the past, it's been everything from Auschwitz to Harvard.

Here are five favourite haunts of Hollywood filmmakers.

University of Toronto
The old stone buildings of the university's central campus make a great stand in for just about any historic North American educational institution. Though the movie is set in the suburbs of Chicago, the Mathletes scene in Mean Girls was shot at Convocation Hall (the actual school is Etobicoke Collegiate Institute,) and Hollywood films like Capote, Chicago, Good Will Hunting, Cocktail and The Incredible Hulk have also used various parts of the campus as a backdrop. Chicago also included scenes filmed at the Elgin Theatre on Yonge St., Union Station, Osgoode Hall, and Queen's Park legislature building.

Toronto City Hall
The modernist towers of City Hall and by extension Nathan Phillips Square have served as the backdrop to key battle scenes in Resident Evil: Apocalypse and played Washington D.C. landmark in the movie The Sentinel, about a rogue U.S. Secret Service agent (Michael Douglas) bent on killing the president. Kiefer Sutherland, as David Breckinridge, eventually catches up to him by the reflecting pool in the movie's climax. Oh, and let's not forget the cameo in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Casa Loma
Casa Loma, the former home of wealthy financier Sir Henry Pellatt and once the largest private residence in the country, is a bizarre architectural oddity, making it an ideal prop for movies in need of a scary castle or opulent palace. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, which unlike most movies filmed in Toronto is actually set here, features Casa Loma prominently, as do X Men, Chicago, Cocktail, and The Love Guru.

The Distillery District
Now a popular tourist destination, the city's historic distillery district, built in the mid-1800s, makes a perfect Victorian street backdrop. Many of the old whiskey factory's appearances on screen came during the 1990s, when the area was abandoned, and into the early 2000s. Thousands of films such as David Cronenberg's The Fly, Undercover Brother, Death to Smoochie, Three Men and a Baby, Blues Brothers 2000, Chicago, The Long Kiss Goodnight. In Cinderella Man, the area was the New Jersey docks, and in X-Men, it played a concentration camp.

Financial District
Toronto's downtown office towers, especially TD Centre, are dead ringers for similar buildings in U.S. cities. American Psycho's creepy business card scene was filmed in TD Centre and The RoboCop remake pretends our downtown Toronto is Detroit. More recently, the Bay-Adelaide Centre has been used in the TV series Suits. Usually, the maroon Scotia Plaza building is the giveaway.

BONUS

Under the Gardiner
Countless films have used the stretch of Lake Shore Blvd. under the Gardiner to make Toronto look perhaps a bit more rawly urban than it really ease. The Total Recall reboot shut Lake Shore down a few times to shoot here, though the resulting scenes are obscured with layer upon layer of effects. It (unsurprisingly) features heavily in David Cronenberg's Crash, and often doubles as Chicago (see The Vow).

SEE ALSO

• 10 movies you might not know were shot in Toronto

Chris Bateman is a staff writer at blogTO. Follow him on Twitter at @chrisbateman.

Image: /blogTO Flickr pool.