American actress and model Megan Fox nearly busts out of red silk bra as she celebrates 35th birthday with boyfriend Machine Gun Kelly in Santa Monica, California on May 15, 2021. (Photo by Splash News and Pictures)

Festival goers blow soap-bubbles at the 28th Sziget (Island) Festival on Shipyard Island, Northern Budapest, Hungary, 15 August 2022. The festival is one of the biggest cultural events of Europe offering art exhibitions, theatrical and circus performances and above all music concerts. (Photo by Marton Monus/EPA/EFE)

A walrus kisses a visitor during a sea animal show at the Hakkeijima Sea Paradise aquarium-amusement park complex in Yokohama, southwest of Tokyo, Monday, September 11, 2017. (Photo by Shizuo Kambayashi/AP Photo)

Parade-goers walk in the annual West Indian Day Parade on September 02, 2019 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. The annual celebration of Caribbean culture is one of the largest of its kind and features dozens of floats and costumed participants that make their way down Flatbush Avenue. (Photo by Yana Paskova/Getty Images)

A model stumbles as she presents a creation by Swiss designer Albert Kriemler as part of his Spring/Summer 2020 women's ready-to-wear collection show for fashion house Akris during the Paris Fashion Week in Paris, France, September 29, 2019. (Photo by Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters)

Artist and photographer Spencer Tunick, right, walks past models covering themselves with large leaves, as he talks about his next project at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Thursday, November 24, 2022. Tuncik is expecting to photograph thousands of nude people on Bondi Beach on Saturday. (Photo by Rick Rycroft/AP Photo)

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.

A mother bear takes a dip in the water to cool off in the warm summer sun but refuses to leave her three youngsters behind – so they climb aboard her back. (Photo by Jon Langeland/Solent News & Photo Agency)