A woman holds-up a white T-shirt trying to prevent being shot, as Palestinians flee Gaza City to the southern Gaza Strip on Salah al-Din street in Bureij, Tuesday, November 7, 2023. (Photo by Mohammed Dahman/AP Photo)

Women smeared with “Gulal” as they celebrate Holi, the Hindu spring festival of colours, in Kolkata on March 25, 2024. (Photo by Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP 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.

“After the death of a teenager (14-year-old Elijah Doughty), hundreds of Indigenous locals took to the streets of Kalgoorlie to vent their anger. Danella Bevis captures the grief and outrage of a family and a community. There is raw aggression in an eruption of racial tensions and violence, and in stark contrast she concludes the narrative with a moment of quiet beauty at a dusk vigil”. (Photo by Danella Bevis/The Walkley Foundation)

In this photograph taken on October 4, 2016, an Afghan baker prepares bread at his shop as he waits for customers in Lashkar Gah, the capital city of Helmand province. For years Helmand was the centerpiece of the Western military intervention in Afghanistan only for it to slip deeper into a quagmire of instability, with almost the entire southern province teetering on the verge of collapse. Intensified fighting has killed hundreds and forced thousands to flee to besieged capital Lashkar Gah, sparking a humanitarian crisis as the city – one of the last government- held enclaves – risks falling to the Taliban' s repeated ferocious assaults. (Photo by Wakil Kohsar/AFP Photo)

Puryanti, a 29-year-old woman, and her 15-year-old nephew Raffi, cover themselves from head to toe in silver paint to become “manusia silver” (silver people), as part of their act to make a living, in Depok, on the outskirts of Jakarta, Indonesia, February 6, 2021. (Photo by Adi Kurniawan/Reuters)

A woman wearing a burqa begs on a street in Mazar-i-Sharif on December 22, 2021. (Photo by Mohd Rasfan/AFP Photo)

A Black movement activist covered by red paint attends a protest against racism and police violence, and against a police operation that took place at Jacarezinho slum in Rio de Janeiro, on the day that marks 133 years since the abolition of Slavery in the country, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on May 13, 2021. (Photo by Amanda Perobelli/Reuters)