British television presenter Maya Jama at “Love Island All: Stars” TV show in London, United Kingdom on December 16, 2023. (Photo by ITV/Love Island/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

English rapper Alesha Dixon (R) and English actress and media personality Amanda Holden arrive for Britain's got Talent Auditions at London Palladium on January 18, 2022 in London, England. (Photo by South West News Service)

Nearly two dozen New Standard Academy students showed up in their finest threads at the school on Flint's north side on Saturday, May 14, 2022 before heading to the Infinity Yacht in St. Clair Shores in the Safe Harbor Jefferson Beach Marina for dinner and dancing at “A Starry Night” theme prom. (Photo by Jake May/MLive.com via AP Photo)

A frightened maid, played by Phoebe Hodgson, knocks a bust off a tall pedestal while dusting, in a scene from the play “Queen High” at the Queen's Theatre. (Photo by Sasha/Getty Images). 1926

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 boy dressed as Lord Krishna is pictured while Hindu devotees march on the streets to celebrate Janmashtami festival, which marks the birth anniversary of Lord Krishna, in Dhaka, August 14, 2017. (Photo by Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters)

“Early morning in Mandawa, rural Rajasthan: it was the morning of Diwali and the streets were swept by smiling women in brightly coloured sarees as I took an early morning cup of chai. Celebrations started later, when darkness fell”. (Photo by Hamish Scott-Brown/Guardian Witness)

For more than 2,000 years, women from the Baiga tribe in the highland district of Dindori, in central India’s Madhya Pradesh state, have been tattooed. Sumintra, 25, from Bona village, has the markings across her forehead, legs and arms. The women who work as tattoo artists are knowledgable about the different types of designs and pigments preferred by various tribes, and their meanings are passed to them by their mothers. The tattooing ‘season’ begins with the approach of winter. (Photo by Ronny Sen/WaterAid/The Guardian)