Performers of circus company Circa perform during a photocall for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe on Calton Hill on August 1, 2017 in Edinburgh, United Kingdom. (Photo by Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian)

Waiters pose at their terrace of their restaurant rue de Buci in Paris on June 2, 2020, as cafes and restaurants reopen in France, while the country eases lockdown measures taken to curb the spread of the COVID-19 (the novel coronavirus). (Photo by Martin Bureau/AFP Photo)

Denver Broncos cheerleaders during the third quarter. The Denver Broncos played the Kansas City Chiefs at Sports Authority Field at Mile High in Denver, Colo. on September 14, 2014. (Photo by Aaron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post via Getty Images)

A member of the “Exit Point” amateur rope-jumping group jumps from a 44-metre high (144-feet high) waterpipe bridge in the Siberian Taiga area outside Krasnoyarsk, September 28, 2014. Fans of rope-jumping, a kind of extreme sport involving a jump from a high point using an advanced system of amortization including mountaineering and rope safety equipment, attended the Golden Autumn group's jumping season. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/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.

Yanelis Blanco, 24, center, dances with a group of friends at Santa Maria beach, about 15 miles from Havana. It is the closest beach to Havana. Others, from left to right are Jackson Miranda, 21, Dayan Suarez, 24, and Melisa Oliva, 15. The men in the group have a rap group together. The government is demolishing buildings all over the coast of East Havana and recovering and restoring beach dunes. (Photo by Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)

British rally driver Kris Meeke jumps his Citroen over a brow during the fifth special stage of the World Rally Championship (WRC) Rally of Australia, near Bellingen on the New South Wales central coast on September 12, 2014. (Photo by William West/AFP Photo)

Russian soldiers are pictured next to the Reichstag building in this undated photo taken May 1945 in Berlin. Some 70 years on from the Battle for Berlin, instrumental in the end of World War II, Reuters photographer Fabrizio Bensch unearthed pictures by Red Army photographer Georgiy Samsonov, showing his portrayal of a city laid siege. Bensch bought an exactly equivalent FED camera, a Soviet copy of the German-made Leica II, choosing to use black and white film to capture images of the self-same locations he detected his way to in modern-day Berlin. (Photo by Georgiy Samsonov/Reuters/MHM)