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.

Mikhail Baburin, 66, talks to his cat Marquis at his house in the remote Siberian village of Mikhailovka, Krasnoyarsk region, Russia, December 5, 2016. Baburin, a former Navy man, barge worker and employee of a military plant in Krasnoyarsk, is the last inhabitant of Mikhailovka, which was founded in the 19th century by migrants from Russia's Mordovia region. He moved in 2000 to Mikhailovka where he was born and has lived there all alone for the last 10 years with only domestic animals. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

Palestinian bedouin shepherds pull their lambs into the water to wash them, in Gaza City, on April 29, 2016. Every year before the beginning of the summer, shepherds wash their herds in the sea. (Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP Photo)

New parents Chrissy Teigen and John Legend are seen leaving Khloe Kardashian's 32nd birthday party held at Dave and Buster's in Hollywood, California on June 28, 2016. (Photo by Splash News)

Typhoon Yolanda – also known as Haiyan – struck the central part of the country November 8, 2013, leaving at least 6,300 people dead and over four million displaced. A month after Typhoon Haiyan, the United Nations Population Fund estimates that 5,000 women were subjected to sеxual violence. A study by the Health and Human Rights online publication shows the majority of young girls and women in Manila’s sеx industry come from poverty-stricken areas – such as Leyte, Samar, Cebu and southern Mindanao – and enter trafficking through force, deception, economic desperation and psychological manipulation. (Photo by Hannah Reyes Morales/The Washington Post)

A U.S. Army B-24 Liberator Bomber is hailed by a ground crewman as it takes off over a line of shark- nosed fighter planes at an advanced base in China on a mission on October 10, 1943, to bomb Japanese installations. (Photo by AP Photo)

Father Felix Mendoza, a Venezuelan Catholic priest, center, prays over a woman who cries, saying she is in physical pain, at a public hospital in Caracas, Venezuela, Tuesday, May 11, 2021, amid the new coronavirus pandemic. Father Felix has been visiting patients at the hospital to comfort the sick, for the last 20 years. (Photo by Ariana Cubillos/AP Photo)

A blue tit takes umbrage at a wing mirror at Suffolk Wildlife Trust’s Arger Fen & Spouse’s Vale reserve in United Kingdom on April 16, 2021. (Photo by Angela Lord/Triangle News)