This handout picture released by the Icelandic Coast Guard on May 29, 2024 shows billowing smoke and flowing lava pouring out of a new fissure, during a surveilance flight above a new volcanic eruption on the outskirts of the evacuated town of Grindavik, western Iceland. (Photo by Icelandic Coast Guard/Handout via 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.

In this photo taken Saturday, February 14, 2015, Benjamin Miller, 20, from Georgia, in the US, is gored by a bull during the “Carnaval del Toro” in Ciudad Rodrigo, Spain. An American youth is recovering in the intensive-care unit of a hospital in western Salamanca after being savagely gored during a bullfighting festival celebrating Carnival, officials said Sunday. Surgeon Enrique Crespo said he was called to operate on 20-year-old Benjamin Miller from Georgia, who had been gored and tossed by a large fighting bull on Saturday, the first day of nearby Ciudad Rodrigo's “Carnaval del Toro”. (Photo by Jose Vicente/AP Photo)

Masked women shout slogans during a demonstration marking the Latin American Day for Decriminalization of Therapeutic Abortion in Managua, Nicaragua, where abortions are illegal, on September 28, 2012. (Photo by Esteban Felix/Associated Press)

Armed Syrian Turkmen villagers are seen near the northern Syrian village of Yamadi, near the Turkish-Syrian border, Syria, November 24, 2015. Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border on Tuesday saying it had repeatedly violated its air space, one of the most serious publicly acknowledged clashes between a NATO member country and Russia for half a century. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

Revellers attend the Victorian Picnic during the Wave and Goth festival in Leipzig, Germany, May 22, 2015. The annual festival, known in Germany as Wave-Gotik Treffen (WGT), features over 100 bands and artists in venues all over the city playing Gothic rock and other styles of the dark wave music subculture. One of the biggest of its kind, the event attracts a regular audience of up to 20,000, the organisers said. (Photo by Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters)

Crowds watch surfers as the first big swell of the year arrives in Nazaré, Portugal on October 28, 2015. (Photo by Pedro Miranda/Demotix/Corbis)

Giant 65-foot-long Hot dog artwork by Brooklyn-based artist duo Jen Catron and Paul Outlaw stands on the middle of Times Square in New York City, NY, USA on April 30, 2024. (Photo by Guerin Charles/ABACA Press/Rex Features/Shutterstock)