Students perform traditional dance as they take part in Pongal celebrations, the Tamil harvest festival, at a college in Chennai on January 10, 2024. (Photo by R. Satish Babu/AFP Photo)

A Guarani boy pets a puppy in the Mata Verde Bonita village, in Marica, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, Thursday, February 25, 2020, where healthcare workers are making the rounds with coolers containing doses of China's Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine as part of a mass immunization program aimed at inoculating all of Rio's 16 million residents by the end of the year. (Photo by Bruna Prado/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.

Chinese artist Zhou Jie takes a nap on an unfinished iron wire bed, one of her sculpture works, after lunch at Beijing Now Art Gallery, in Beijing August 11, 2014. Zhou started her art project titled “36 Days” on August 9, in which she would live inside an exhibition hall with an unfinished iron wire bed, some iron wire sculptures in the shape of stuffed animal dolls, a certain amount of food and her mobile phone, for 36 days. The entire process is open to visitors and she may also interact with them, according to Zhou. (Photo by Jason Lee/Reuters)

Residents of the Santa Marta favela, Botafogo, south zone in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil unite to sanitize the community and fight the advance of the new coronavirus this Saturday, November 28, 2020. (Photo by Ellan Lustosa/ZUMA Wire/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

The X-47B prototype on Tuesday flew off an aircraft carrier and into the history books. Today's achievement, the first-ever catapult launch of an unmanned aircraft from the flight deck of a carrier, promises to open up a new chapter in the annals of naval aviation. Photo: An X-47B pilot-less drone combat aircraft is launched for the first time off an aircraft carrier, the USS George H. W. Bush, in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Virginia, May 14, 2013. The U.S. Navy made aviation history on Tuesday by catapulting an unmanned jet off an aircraft carrier for the first time, testing a long-range, stealthy, bat-winged plane that represents a jump forward in drone technology. (Photo by Jason Reed/Reuters)

Trainees of the Tianjiao Special Guard/Security Consultant bodyguard training camp watch their instructor use a scarf to cover a student's head during a demonstration of close-quarter combat skills at a special course on flight safety inside a scale model of a passenger jet at a flight attendant training centre on the outskirts of Beijing, March 18, 2014. Inspired by the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, the company wanted to emphasize the importance of aviation safety by teaching their trainees emergency evacuation procedures and close-quarter combat skills to handle situations such as natural disasters and plane hijacks, according to the company. (Photo by Jason Lee/Reuters)

Bella Hadid attends the “Tre Piani (Three Floors)” screening during the 74th annual Cannes Film Festival on July 11, 2021 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Lionel Hahn/Getty Images)