A woman walks past a giant Pac-Man in Tokyo's Shinjuku area, Wednesday, August 12, 2015. The three-meter (about nine feet and 10 inches)-tall Pac-Man and other video game characters, made of Lego bricks, were on display to promote the upcoming movie “Pixels”. (Photo by Ken Aragaki/AP Photo)

A woman sits as she gets a tattoo on her leg during the annual Panama City Ink Fest in Panama City August 16, 2015. (Photo by Carlos Jasso/Reuters)

A woman pushes a cart during a protest against racial inequality and call for defunding of Seattle police, in Seattle downtown, Washington, U.S. June 14, 2020. (Photo by Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)

A racehorse is hoisted up before its operation at Veliefendi equine hospital in Istanbul March 3, 2015. A state-of-the-art hospital for hundreds of horses run by the Jockey Club of Turkey at Istanbul's Veliefendi racecourse is the country's oldest and biggest. Grooms and trainers at the equine clinic work with vets and nurses while owners hope their prize runners, often worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, will recover quickly and then run faster still. (Photo by Murad Sezer/Reuters)

Spanish director Pedro Almodovar and actress Penelope Cruz chat before the start of the Spanish Film Academy's Goya Awards ceremony in Madrid, Spain, February 4, 2017. (Photo by Paul Hanna/Reuters)

The northern lights, or aurora borealis, appear in the sky over the Bamburgh lighthouse at Stag Rock in Northumberland, England on September 28, 2016. (Photo by Owen Humphreys/PA Wire via ZUMA Press)

A combination photo shows the faces of various attendees of New York Comic Con in Manhattan, New York, October 8, 2015. The event draws thousands of costumed fans, panels of pop culture luminaries and features a sprawling floor of vendors in a space equivalent to more than three football fields at the Jacob Javits Convention Center on Manhattan's West side. (Photo by Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

Photographer Howard Schatz had an idea: place actors in a series of roles and dramatic situations to reveal the essence of their characters. Such was the premise behind his book, In Character: Actors Acting, which captures some of Hollywood’s most emotive stars in the act of, well, making faces. Luckily for us, he continued the tradition for Vanity Fair. Here are some of the best.