High Def TV: A Movie Star's Nightmare?

"I'm seeing people in a whole new way," says Phillip Swann, president of OnHD.TV, an online magazine. "If somebody's aging or if they've got any old acne damage, it just jumps out at you. They've got no chance." The editors of OnHD.TV examined several dozen stars and compiled a list of heartthrobs who (they claim) wither under the unblinking gaze of high-def, including Cameron Diaz ("littered with unfortunate pockmarks"), Jewel (whose makeup "looks like it was done by Ringling Brothers") and Bill Maher ("scary"). I've seen the effect myself: when I recently watched a high-def close-up of Bradley Whitford -- a handsome star of The West Wing -- a normally insignificant mark on his forehead suddenly stood out like a third eye. I couldn't stop staring.

The high-def format's merciless gaze isn't solely a matter of screen resolution. Color is a factor, too. For years, government standards have limited the range of colors available to broadcasters, based on the technological limits of the time. With high-def, more colors can be used, including some formerly forbidden shades of red -- which means that blotches, zits and tiny nose-veins can be presented with the brutal clarity of a surgery textbook.

"It's almost too realistic, too digital and computery," complains Alexis Vogel, a veteran celebrity makeup artist who recently worked on Stacked, a high-def show starring Pamela Anderson. "We'd all like to go back to the old days." Makeup artists are now engaged in an arms race with the new medium. But they face a paradox: while makeup is more necessary than ever, its artifice is more obvious. You can't slather on powder when every grain looks like a boulder on your client's face. And interestingly, many cosmeticians predict that high-def could actually reduce the amount of plastic surgery in Hollywood, because the tiny seams look Frankensteinian at such high resolution. High-def is, in essence, a medium peculiarly unsuited to dissembling. "It's harder to change people from their natural form," Vogel adds.