Sev­eral years ago, my mother and I took the Coast Starlight from Los Ange­les to Seat­tle. Walk­ing through L.A.‘s lovely old Union Sta­tion, I imag­ined Hedy Lamar, resplen­dent in furs and a smart hat, hur­ry­ing to catch a train. Or Tyrone Power, all mas­cu­line beauty and ele­gance, doing his patri­otic duty and head­ing to Marine boot camp in San Diego in 1942. Movie stars. Hol­ly­wood his­tory. Glam­our. I felt pos­i­tively gor­geous myself.

The 80th Acad­emy Awards are on this Sun­day ( 8 p.m. ET on ABC, if you’re inter­ested), and I’ll be glued to my tele­vi­sion. And that’s not just because my man George Clooney is nom­i­nated for Best Actor this year. I never miss the Oscars if I can help it, even if I haven’t had a chance to see most of the movies. All those beau­ti­ful peo­ple in fab­u­lous clothes and jew­els. See­ing the cin­e­matog­ra­phers and the direc­tors and–yes!–the writ­ers who make movies hap­pen. Get­ting teary-eyed when they flash the pho­tos of all the movie peo­ple who’ve died since the last Acad­emy Awards. I even like the dance num­bers. For a lit­tle while, I’m part of Hol­ly­wood, almost an insider.

So I’m starstruck. Yep, shame­lessly so. It’s fun to see actors I rec­og­nize. Once, Jackie Chan was on my flight to Los Ange­les. I smiled at him as I passed through first class to steer­age, and he smiled back. I passed Tony Shaloub walk­ing along in L.A.‘s Larch­mont Vil­lage. In “X-Files” days, a friend who worked on the show intro­duced me to David Duchovny. In Park Slope, Brook­lyn, I saw John Tur­turro eat­ing a bagel and read­ing the paper in a cof­fee shop. It was even thrilling to see Paul Win­field come out of a store in the Bev­erly Cen­ter in Los Ange­les, clad in a yel­low caftan.

And it’s all because I love movies. Hol­ly­wood may be arti­fice, but the movies, they’re magic. There’s noth­ing pro­found or orig­i­nal about say­ing it, but it’s true. And that’s why I love the Oscars. They honor the magic and the magicians.