The only blemish on Harry Potter is a scar shaped like a lightning bolt on his forehead sustained during an attempt on his life as a baby.

But the ravages of adolescence on the face of Daniel Radcliffe, who plays the teenage magician on film, are so prominent that a digital effects team is using technical wizardry to smooth over his acne.

The Times understands that technicians are going through the forthcoming Harry Potter film frame by frame to airbrush unsightly pimples from the lead actor’s face. Despite the skill of the make-up team working on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Radcliffe’s spots are all too visible under studio lights, especially when projected on to the screen.

Radcliffe’s true complexion is clearly visible to fans waiting outside the stage door of the Gielgud Theatre in the West End of London, where he is performing in Equus by Peter Shaffer. The play will close on June 9, three months after it opened, it was announced yesterday.

One post-production technician, who asked not to be named, said that digital enhancement of actors’ skin had become routine in Hollywood films, but was kept from the public because stars had it written into their contracts that it cannot be discussed. “It is a bit unfair on teenagers watching the film because they can’t expect to have skin like Harry Potter,” he said. “We often go through films erasing crows’ feet on older actresses and spots on teenage actors.”

Vanessa Davies, Radcliffe’s spokeswoman, said that she did not know if the actor’s face had been altered, but added that enhancement was common practice. “No photograph goes from the camera to the screen without something being done to it these days,” she said.

Radcliffe, 17, and his teenage co-stars, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson, have spent much of their adolescent years on set, but none has ever appeared on film with acne.

Jeff Okun, chairman of the Visual Effects Society, said that he was aware of two Hollywood actors whose contracts always state that their eyes are “fixed” digitally. “I have personally removed blemishes, replaced eyes that had broken blood vessels with clear ones, removed age spots, repaired damaged skin, repaired bad hair, changed shirts on actors who were wearing the wrong one for the scene, added people to shots, taken people out of shots, replaced a child’s toy dinosaur with a stuffed animal because [the film-makers] did not have the rights to the dino toy, and so on.”

Harry Potter does not suffer from acne, but J. K. Rowling, his creator, does tackle the subject in her books. One character, Eloise Midgen, tries to use a curse to rid her of acne and has to have her nose reattached.

Out damn spot

Hair was digitally mapped on to Bruce Willis’s bald patch in Death Becomes Her, a comedy starring Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep released in 1992

Some takes of The Saint, had to be altered digitally when Elizabeth Shue arrived on set with marks on her face because she had been scratched by her dog

Jennifer Connolly’s tears in one of the closing scenes of Blood Diamond, in which she starred opposite Leonardo DiCaprio, were added digitally after the shot was taken

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