Mermaid Hales Parcells geets children as she performs at the Virginia Aquarium in Virginia Beach, Va., Monday, April 3, 2017. The Aquarium presents a mermaid show one night each week during the month of April. (Photo by Steve Helber/AP Photo)

Visitors and a dog stand on the new “Skywalk” viewing platform on the Sonnenstein mountain in the Eichsfeld region near Bad Lauterberg im Harz, central Germany, on May 22, 2017. (Photo by Martin Schutt/AFP Photo/DPA)

A Rohingya refugee woman is helped from a boat as she arrives exhausted on the Bangladesh side of the Naf River at Shah Porir Dwip after fleeing her village in Myanmar, on October 1, 2017 in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

People take pictures of 30 Rockefeller Plaza as it is lit in the colors of the Democratic and Republican parties ahead of the U.S presidential election in Manhattan, New York, U.S., November 7, 2016. (Photo by Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

In this March 20, 2016 photo, Maj. Mohammed Hussein, an officer with Iraq's elite counterterrorism forces, shows a photo of a slain Islamic State group militant still wearing in a suicide vest, taken during fighting that freed the city of Ramadi from IS control earlier this year. As they fled, the militants destroyed some buildings and booby-trapped others with explosives, leaving behind an empty prize for government forces retaking the city. (Photo by Maya Alleruzzo/AP Photo)

Sailors attend a memorial and funeral service for first rank captain Andrei Paliy, Russia's Black Sea Fleet deputy commander, who was killed in the eastern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol on March 20, in Sevastopol, Crimea on March 23, 2022. (Photo by Alexey Pavlishak/Reuters)

Spanish singer Rosalia Vila Tobella, known mononymously as Rosalía performs during Louis Vuitton Menswear ready-to-wear Fall/Winter 2023-2024 collection show as part of Men's Fashion Week in Paris, France on January 19, 2023. (Photo by Sarah Meyssonnier/Reuters)

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.