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.

A fireman looks on as a Canadair aircraft drops water to extinguish a wildfire in Sicily's Trapani, Italy on August 27, 2023. (Photo by Antonio Cascio/Reuters)

A woman wearing a face mask walk through Shinjuku area on January 07, 2021 in Tokyo, Japan. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga is set to declare a state of emergency in Tokyo and neighboring three prefectures, Kanagawa, Saitama, and Chiba on Thursday, following the recent surge in COVID-19 cases in the region. Tokyo saw over 2000 new cases per day for the first time on January 7, 2021. (Photo by Yuichi Yamazaki/Getty Images)

A woman wears a scuba mask and a surgical mask as a precaution against the spread of the new coronavirus, while buying food in a popular market in Lima, Peru, Monday, March 23, 2020. The vast majority of people recover from the COVID-19 disease. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)

A couple kiss in front of a barricade set by demonstrators during clashes with police following a protest condemning the arrest of rap singer Pablo Hasél in Barcelona, Spain, Thursday, February 18, 2021. Protests over the imprisonment of a rapper convicted for insulting the Spanish monarchy and praising terrorist violence have morphed for the third night in a row into rioting. Pablo Hasél began this week to serve a 9-month sentence in a northeastern prison. (Photo by Emilio Morenatti/AP Photo)

To draw the public's attention to a new line of bathing suits, a Tokyo department store used live models to show off the suits on June 5, 1950. The rain didn't bother the curious, and both the girls and the crowd seemed to like the idea of staring at each other through the glass. (Photo by AP Photo via The Atlantic)

Elderly people attend an aquatic exercise at a private pool in Bangkok, Thailand, April 28, 2016. Many Thai families look after elderly relatives at a cost that countrywide adds up to just under a third of household income. The number of families facing this issue will balloon as the population ages at a rate among the fastest in Southeast Asia. (Photo by Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)

In this September 16, 2017 photo, a music fan poses for the photo against an angel wings' mural at the Rock in Rio music festival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (Photo by Leo Correa/AP Photo)