Models promote a condom brand at the first Shenzhen s*x Culture Festival on September 21, 2007 in Shenzhen of Guangdong Province, China. The festival aims to increase awareness about reproductive health and popularise s*x education. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)

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.

Soldiers of the 70th division of the American 7th Army hold up a Nazi flag and a portrait of Adolf Hitler, taken during the World War II capture of Saarbrucken. (Photo by Horace Abrahams/Keystone/Getty Images). 22nd March 1945

Kyrgyz men on horseback compete during their traditional game of “Oodarysh” during the celebrations of the 90th anniversary formation of the Chui region in the village of Kuntu some 20 kms from Bishkek on May 27, 2016. (Photo by Vyacheslav Oseledko/AFP Photo)

The sun bear (Ursus malayanus), also known as the honey bear, is a bear found primarily in the tropical rainforest (the dense lowland forests) in Southeast Asia; North-East India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Southern China, Peninsular Malaysia, and the islands of Sumatra and Borneo.

Dancers wearing masks and kimonos perform in the streets at the “Super Yosakoi 2015” dance festival in Tokyo on August 30, 2015. One hundred dance teams with some 5,500 people participated in the two-day summer festival event. (Photo by Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP Photo)

A protester from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) displays a placard from a bathtub as a people looks on during a demonstration to call on the public to eat more vegetables to save water, in Sao Paulo on August 2, 2016. (Photo by Cris Faga via ZUMA Wire)

«Underwater». Laurie Simmons discovered this silicone sеx doll in a shop while on holiday in Japan and was immediately interested in the type of generic beauty their looks could add to her work. She went on to create the Love Doll series, in which she places silicone sеx dolls in positions that explore a woman’s interior life. (Photo by Laurie Simmons/Salon 94/The Guardian)