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.

Festival goers splash through a muddy puddle at Worthy Farm in Somerset, on the third day of the Glastonbury music festival June 27, 2014. (Photo by Cathal McNaughton/Reuters)

Students walk to school on the first day of their new school year in Giza, south of Cairo, Egypt September 25, 2016. (Photo by Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters)

Singer Ariana Grande (C) performs “Side by Side” during the 2016 American Music Awards in Los Angeles, California, U.S., November 20, 2016. (Photo by Mario Anzuoni/Reuters)

In this Wednesday, April 12, 2017, photo, waitresses wait outside a restaurant in Pyongyang, North Korea. A generational divide is quietly growing in North Korea, often hidden behind relentless propaganda. On the streets there are young women in not-quite mini-skirts and teenage boys with baseball hats cocked sideways, K-pop style. (Photo by Wong Maye-E/AP Photo)

A masked participant carries a burning matress during the ancient carnival of Zubieta, in the northern Spanish Navarra province on January 30, 2018. The yearly three day festivities, revolving mainly around agriculture and principally sheep hearding, run on the last Sunday, Monday and Tuesday of January where Navarra Valley locals from two villages dress up and participate in a variety of activites as they perform a pilgrimage through each village. (Photo by Ander Gillenea/AFP Photo)

A migrant labourer gets a shave besides a closed shop in a market area in the old quarters of the walled city, Delhi during an ongoing state-wide weekend curfew imposed by the directive of the Delhi government to curb the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus in New Delhi on January 9, 2022. (Photo by Money Sharma/AFP Photo)

New Market traders rescue an injured shopkeeper who got hurt during a clash with students from Dhaka college in Dhaka on April 19, 2022. (Photo by Munir Uz Zaman/AFP Photo)