Boys play with water as they celebrate Myanmar's New Year Water Festival of Thingyan in Yangon, April 13, 2016. (Photo by Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters)

A man drinks at a "colored" water cooler in a streetcar terminal in Oklahoma City, July 1939. (Photo by Reuters/Library of Congress)

Residents with faces covered in ash ride on a motorcycle as Mount Sinabung volcano erupts, in Sukandebi village in Karo Regency, Indonesia's North Sumatra province, Indonesia June 13, 2015, in this photo taken by Antara Foto. (Photo by Rony Muharrman/Reuters/Antara Foto)

A woman wears false flag eyelashes during the St Patrick's day parade through Dublin city centre on St Patrick's day, on March 17, 2013. (Photo by Julien Behal/PA Wire)

Student protestors, including one girl with a camera, struggle with soldiers from the Chinese Army, the PLA. Tiananmen Square, 1989. (Photo by Jeff Widener/Associated Press)

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.

President Calvin Coolidge rides in a car during his inaugural parade in Washington, D.C., U.S. in March 1925. (Photo by Reuters/Library of Congress)