Why I'm Obsessed With How Julianne Moore Became Sarah Palin

Lately, I've been increasingly obsessed with how much Julianne Moore looks like Sarah Palin in those ubiquitous ads for her upcoming HBO movie, "Game Change."

The made-for-TV picture from the best-selling book of the same name documents Sarah Palin's rise from hayseed to big wig -- and all that other stuff that went down during the whole "I swear I read newspapers" kerfuffle that was her run for Veep four years ago.

Now, I know it's a riveting story -- an important one at that -- but if I'm honest, what I really want to know is how they transformed pale Raphaeilite beauty Moore into outdoorsy Palin so convincingly. To scratch this itch, I started digging around. Here's what I've unearthed:

In an interview with "People" magazine, Moore explained that aside from the "architecture" of their faces being different, the biggest hurdle to the two-hour daily on-set process was skin tone. "I don't tan, I just get freckly, so we had to cover up my freckles, then darken my skin," said the actress.

Moore also revealed that ophthalmologist Mitchell Cassell, MD, reworked contact lenses so that the area of Moore's iris seemed larger and darker, to more closely resemble Palin's.

Wigs, too, played a big part of the transformation -- but it was the glasses that were the final piece of the puzzle. Moore explained: "The glasses were exactly the same ones [Palin] wears, but they were scaled down because my face is a little bit smaller."

Once the smoke and mirrors of makeup and movie magic clear, the thing that I'm now convinced really makes Moore look like Palin is her talent. From what I've seen in the teasers, the Oscar-winning actress "becomes" Alaska's former governor -- and that ability (coupled with some awesomely talented hair and makeup staff) is what makes the transformation so utterly convincing and mesmerizing to behold.